Leaving the Cadillac, Michigan area, we headed north to a small inland lake by the town of Interlochen, Bass Lake. There we would be vacationing with Laura’s dad, stepmom, and her siblings and their families, and on our way to the house, Laura found out that 15-year-old Miles was learning to drive. Her spontaneous response: “Yay, Miles! Don’t kill anyone!” Little did we know at the time, but this was just the first step in Laura cementing a roll for herself during our vacation as: the Fun Governor.

The title of Fun Governor was first applied to Laura’s friend Shannon by her husband Aaron, due Aaron’s perception that Shannon was always reigning in the family’s fun. Given the shenanigans that Shannon was part of when she was younger, the fact that she is now a Fun Governor is a commentary either on how much she has changed or the definition of “fun” employed by Aaron. I mean, for 1/3 of Laura’s and Shannon’s lives, they were the champions of ungoverned fun, and even now, they sometimes backslide.

We reached our house near Interlochen, Michigan to find storms that brought heavy rains and that Miles did not, in fact, kill someone with his dad’s rental car. The next morning was cool and cloudy, inspiring us to explore the area around the lake house.

The house was just southwest of Green Lake and Interlochen, putting us within striking distance of some of the most popular places to visit in Michigan. One of those attractions was Traverse City; we could get to downtown Traverse City in around a half an hour.

Traverse City is a touristy lakeside town with lots of ways to entertain the kids. Some of them were even Fun Governor approved.

The main stretch of Traverse City is full of shops, especially clothing shops. While many of them were nice family establishments, we found some that did not align with the Fun Governor’s mission statement for the trip.

The last time Laura, McKenna, and I were in Traverse City, we stayed in a Motel 6 that smelled overpoweringly of chlorine, even by our room, far from the swimming pool. Mercifully, we were spared staying at a hotel that simulated a World War I poison gas attack in its hallways. Still, there were other threats to brain cells on this trip. Similar to how, in Lord of the Rings, Frodo struggled to resist the draw of the One Ring, the One Phone is difficult to part from.

And clearly some did not escape the brain rot brought on by the pre-lunch doomscrolling.

After lunch, we did some additional shopping and then headed back south. By the time we returned to Bass Lake, the clouds were gone and lake activities approved by the Fun Governor could commence.

And some unauthorized activities that occurred while the Fun Governor was distracted.

Don’t be fooled by the amount of fun you may be seeing in these pictures. The Fun Governor took firm control of the vacation home and established regulations regarding:

• The immediate and complete banning of football throwing in or close to the rental house;
• The mandatory reeducation of any person who left a football on the floor, with the length of the rehabilitation proportional to the proximity with which the football was left near the bottom of the stairs;
• The life-saving equipment to be worn on kayaks and the penalty that would be set for violators: a lengthy interrogation involving no fewer than 15 questions from Laura;
• How and at what volume food would be chewed as well as the distance from Laura that certain foods had to be consumed.

In spite of any governing that occurred, enough fun was had that much of our group made a slow start the next day.

At the crack of 11am, Laura, McKenna, and I headed north to see part of Sleeping Bear Dunes. We made the 45 minute drive from the Bass Lake House to the Sleeping Bear Point trailhead, which we had not had a chance to do during our last visit to the area.

The trail can be hiked as a 2.5 mile loop, but knowing the group I was with and that much of the trail was loose sand, I opted to take us only on the spur trail that went out to Lake Michigan, which was just over half a mile each way.

The slog part of this trail is very short. At the sign where the loop trail continues, we were close to the overlook of Lake Michigan.

As we saw on the Nurnberg Trail earlier in our trip, the contrast between the sand dunes and the water of Lake Michigan is spectacular.

When we reached the water, the surf was the brightest, most vivid shade of turquoise that we had seen on our trips to Michigan. The water was a little cooler in temperature than at the Nordhouse Dunes beach we experienced earlier in the week, but, while the lake was a bit rougher on this day, it was still crystal clear near the shore.

The part of Lake Michigan by Sleeping bear Dunes can look a lot like the section of the Outer Banks that we visit every year. One major difference is the juxtaposition of a large body of water with a wall of sand that rises above the surf.

The sand on the hill looks firm, but when McKenna gave climbing it a try, the shifting sand made climbing it quite a challenge, with what seemed to be apparent footholds sometimes collapsing when they were stepped on. On closer inspection of the hill, we could see that there were small “rivers” off sand constantly pouring down the hill, as the sand was dried by the sun and blown free by the wind.

The whole walk ended up being about 1.3 miles, including our leisurely strolls through the surf and McKenna’s aborted attempt to climb the dune. By the time we returned to the Bass Lake house, the Fun Governor had been gone for only a couple of hours, but ungoverned fun had nevertheless occurred in the meantime, with Miles nearly sinking one of the unsinkable kayaks.

That evening, we decided that this would be the day we would go to see the sunset over Lake Michigan and to get ice cream. The previous day, we had planned to visit Moomers, which in the early 2000’s had been named the best ice cream maker in the country. While I am always skeptical of such claims (isn’t almost all homemade ice cream pretty incredible?), I’m not the kind of person who lets doubts about the relative awesomeness of ice cream stand in the way of seeking out that ice cream, and when the phrase “best ice cream in the country” is used to describe ice cream, acquiring it becomes a holy crusade. Unfortunately, the original Moomers was out of our way since we were headed west, but I was able to find a place in the coastal town of Frankfort that served Moomers ice cream, where we could use the scientific method to test whether Moomers does, in fact, have the best ice cream in the country.

We timed our arrival at the coast perfectly to get to the Scoop of Frankfort for massive amounts of ice cream just before the line doubled in size. Then we made our way to the public beach for a sunset photo shoot.

At this time of the year, the sun doesn’t set until around 9pm in that part of Michigan, and we had some time to kill before the sun stopped wasting our time and actually set. We used that time to explore the nearby Frankfort lighthouse.

The causeway out to the lighthouse was surrounded on each side by chunks of concrete and rocks, which were visible through the clear water.

In the Fun Governor’s defense, it is surprising that the causeway designers went full Darwinian-survival-of-the-fittest in creating the walkway, with the causeway even narrowing as we approached the lighthouse and the underwater rocks and concrete becoming more jagged. In a possibly related development, we turned back before completely reaching the lighthouse.

In McKenna’s ice cream-addled state, I even got her to agree to do something that she normally would have considered too “embarrassing” to do in front of other people who she will never see again, ever.

In spite of the lack of hand-rails, we successfully navigated the lighthouse causeway in time to see the sun’s final descent.

Our next day was a big one. We planned to go to the Empire Bluff Trail first, then to the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes, next to Glen Arbor for lunch, and finally to the beach at Good Harbor Bay. Empire Bluff was just over 30 minutes from the Bass Lake house, and when we arrived around noon, the trailhead parking lot was overflowing and the trail was significantly busier than the last time we had visited.

Laura and I had experienced similar high demand for parking back in Virginia, at Pony Pasture on the James River. We were leaving Pony Pasture one day when the parking lot was completely full, and one parent, seeing us about to pull out but too far away to navigate the car to the space, took the unconventional step of offloading his 8-year-old daughter and ordering the daughter to stand in the parking space. The daughter more or less acted as a traffic cone in the space, diverting competing car parkers. When challenged by another car driver, the young girl boldly responded that the spot was already taken, indicating that this parking lot experience was not her first rodeo. While this approach to acquiring a space in the busy parking lot was open to us at Empire Bluff, we opted not to trust the lives of the children to the judgement of parking space seekers.

It is easy to see why the trail is so popular; the walk to the overlook is only about 3/4 of a mile, and the payoff at the end is spectacular.

The last time we visited, which was at the same time of year and a little later in the day, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

This time, the trail and overlook were both crowded, with marauding bands of oblivious teenagers making it almost impossible to get a clear picture of the beautiful scenery. There is a spot at the overlook that is obviously the best place to take a group picture, which is exactly where this group of teenagers camped, blocking the area for far longer than they should have, much like a confused Walmart shopper who has turned his cart perpendicular to the shelves while dazedly looking for the ketchup on the cereal aisle.

Then, just when we thought we had found a place to take a picture without a sheeplike flock of teens milling aimlessly in the background, they started slowly migrating behind us. This was too much, forcing Laura and I resort to using our teacher voices while bringing to bear our philosophy about the value of public shaming on the teens.

While we were returning, we had a chance to contribute to a proud family tradition: the Stalker Picture. This tradition involves Laura in the background of a picture, “stalking” family members, which was inspired by an accidental stalking in San Diego. It has taken the nation by storm.

Sadly, no TikTok influencer has seen fit to tout the awesomeness of the Stalker picture, so the tradition was rejected by our teens and tween children as lame and embarrassing. Since we are terrific parents, this just increased our desire to take as many stalker pictures as we could on this busy, very public trail. So while the teenagers ran into the woods and hid in shame, we took advantage of a fallen tree right on the main trail to create multiple stalker photos.

Returning to the spots we had commandeered for our cars in the busy parking area, we headed just a bit north to the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes. The Dune Climb might be the most famous part of Sleeping Bear Dunes, involving climbing a two-tiered dune that is almost 300 feet tall.

After applying sunscreen under the Fun Governor’s supervision, we were ready for the climb.

Walking up a hill in loose sand is not easy, and when we reached the first sand plateau, that was far enough for some in the group.

Climbing a dune that size really doesn’t happen anywhere else in the United States. While the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge in North Carolina are similarly expansive, they aren’t nearly as tall as the dunes at Sleeping Bear. Climbing all of that loose sand is unusual enough that it feels more like something Rocky would do to prepare himself to win the Cold War. By the time we go to the top, we were ready to punch frozen meat or something.

Fortunately, we had mastered the Fremen sand-walking techniques necessary to overcome the challenge of the dune second hill while avoiding summoning giant killer worms.

Finally, we reached the top of the second dune. Most of us were filled with a sense of accomplishment by our discoveries at the dune plateau.

For some, the long climb to the top helped them cope with withdrawal symptoms they may have been suffering due to the 20 minute separation from their personal devices.

From the top of the dune, the trail continues to Lake Michigan, about 1.8 miles to the west. Some people complete the Dune Climb, hike to Lake Michigan, and then walk all the way down the steep dune to the lake, which is around 450 feet from the top to the waterline. That means that coming back up involves going straight up a sand wall for 450 feet. Apparently, the challenge of the Dune Climb was not enough to alert people to the difficulties of climbing back up from the lake, because signs everywhere warned that the cost would be $3000 if the authorities had to bring you back up.

Having taken in the views and ruled out marriage-ending 450 foot dune hikes, it was time to go back down the dune.

After most of us made our way down by more conventional means, we headed north to Glen Arbor, taking the scenic route through the Glen Lake Narrows that offer views of Glen Lake. At Glen Arbor, we met John and Diane at the Cherry Public House, which is connected to the Cherry Republic. As the names imply, cherries are produced in this part of Michigan, and the Cherry Public House takes as a sacred duty the task of proselytizing all that is great about cherries. There were cherry burger toppings, pickled cherries, cherry beers, cherry infused lemonades, and more. They even gave out free chocolate-covered cherries, like some kind of cherry pusher.

The last stop of the day was at Good Harbor Bay beach, one of many sandy beaches with clear water in the area. We thought that by going east from Sleeping Bear Dunes a bit we might find a less crowded beach.

After setting up camp far closer to other people than I typically like to be, we went where there were fewer people: in the 70ish degree water.

At the beach, the group could engage in wholesome activities like winning a splash war against McKenna’s shamefully ineffective splash resistance, watching Miles’ odd efforts to get attention by repeatedly almost drowning himself in deep water, and clearing the beach of our competition for beach chair space by weaponizing bubble wands.

This day with the kids as well as a meditation session during the beach bubble assault gave Mark a clearer understanding of the Buddha’s First Noble Truth.

Around 6pm, we packed up our beach camp to head back to the lake house, conscious of the Fun Governor’s warnings about the dangers of driving on rural roads at night, with all of the murderously suicidal deer in the area. That gave us time to take one last group picture before the dangerous malarial mosquitoes swarmed us.

A picture session that ended, of course, with a Fun Governor approved dismount.