Michigan '13: Northern Love

Hello all!

As promised I am doing a whole post on my trip to Michigan! We had an amazing time as usual, and it flew by so quickly! Some of you may not know that Michigan was where I was born, and it is in my top places in the world. I love how peaceful Lake Huron is in the summer, and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks at my grandparents house outside my bedroom window is the most relaxing sound ever. 

We started off our road trip from Bradenton at 6:30AM where my mom lives, and drove the 24 hours straight to Alpena, Michigan. Our stops typically include Chattanooga, TN where we go to Lupi's Pizza Pies (the best pizza ever) and McKays. This time we stopped at a park near Mckays to let the dogs run around and get some energy out. We usually stop at the Chick-fil-a in Lexington for dinner, but we skipped on that one because it was only about 6PM when we passed there so we decided to wait! Instead, we decided to stop at a subway in northern KY, but it turned out to not be in our favor. 45 minutes was the time it took to get our four subs because management had left the place Joey staffed with only one employee. Crazy. 

We finally made it to Alpena around 8AM, which isn't bad since we stopped for an hour and a half in TN and almost another hour in KY. Our first day was spent going to church (and almost falling asleep from exhaustion) and just relaxing. One of my favorite things I love about MI is that you can do nothing but read a book and its still a good day! 

To highlight some other points in our trip, we went to my other grandparents house, who live on the beach side of the lake, and let Nike dig in the sand and played some beach croquet. Their side of Lake Huron is super private, and Madi and I usually aren't beach people, but we love this beach. The sand is perfect and the water is salt less, which in my opinion is the best kind :). 

We also got to go to Lee's mini golf which is so much cheaper than FL mini golf! Another favorite is Mandarin Garden, a Chinese restaurant, which has amazing food. Of course we went downtown and saw a movie at the State Theatre, Grown Ups 2 (which I do not recommend, it was not the best). I checked up on my books at Blue Phoenix which is always so cool to me. Madi and I joined our 989 bestows Kelsey and Aniket at John Laos Saloon which is a cute steakhouse in Mi! It was delish!

This year instead of going to Chicago like we typically do, we decided to take two day trips to Mackinaw and Traverse City  (I wrote about Mackinaw below). Traverse City was fun! We went for shopping, which wasn't a lot compared to Florida shopping, but we got to go to Target and a real mall since Alpena is lacking in those areas. Downtown TC was very cute and had lots of Michigan themed shops which I loved! I got the cutest t-shirt at one! 

Overall the trip flew by, but we were so happy just to get away from school and the Florida heat and just relax for a little while! I'm working on another Random Addictions post as well as DIY because I started to look at Halloween costumes! This year we decided I'm going to try and use pieces from different places to make my own for when we go to Disney!

Thanks for reading :)

Olivia