Europhile: C'est ma vie!

U.P. UP ? : Day 3

James Joyce anyone??? Upper Peninsula. Right.

Drove across the Mackinac Bridge UP to the U.P., where Ali and I had a lovely drive along the coast of Lake Michigan. It was like cheap oceanfront property. I liked how they called local seafood "lakefood" although somehow that makes it sound a little disgusting. Ate lunch at the Swedish Pantry in Escanaba, MI. The road signs all said it was the best. I'm a sucker for good advertising. It was okay, but the decor was fantastic with old clocks and lots of umlauts. Made me wonder if someone confused Sweden with Switzerland! I felt like I was doing something, in my own small way, for my heritage. Aside from having the last name Wicklund, that is. The nice, non-swedish lady at the counter suggested that I HAD to drive down to the bottom of main street because there was a lovely park there. Well, I was in a hurry, but I thought, why not. The funny thing is that when you drive across the country, you see an awful lot of places. Big cities, small towns, national parks, forests, and coastlines. But the best places are always the little things that you discover where you're not expecting to. Everyone expects Yellowstone National Park to be beautiful. It is. But who knew the university campus in Bozeman was so pretty? Well, maybe you did. I didn't, at the time. Whatever, sidetracking sidetracking. The long and the short of it was, I found such a nice beach, inhabited by such, errr, nice folks (ahem), that I just had to stay a little while. So I cut Wisconsin a little short. It wasn't that nice anyway.

Made it to St Paul, Minnesoooota around 7.30, in time to meet Ryan and his fiancee Mara Garcia, for dinner at a Russian restaurant downtown.

Town of the day: Frankenmuth. 1-800-fun-town.

posted by europhile @ 23:02