Its been a few years since we have been to Great Lakes Crossing and James and Mom really wanted to go. James was looking for games at the game store and Mary was looking for deals at the Women stores.

Dad really did not want to go so he dropped the two off at the shopping complex and went to kill an hour at another attraction.

Great Lakes Crossing is the largest indoor outlet mall in Michigan and this day it was a little busy but not really bad, considering it was Memorial Day weekend. A great time was had by one and all at two different locations in Michigan.

Its been about a week since a #3 tornado touched down in Gaylord and the community was very busy putting things back together.

We had spent many nights in Gaylord and enjoy the town very much. Its pretty much a hunting town but there are plenty of stores on the city main street. When we saw videos of the storm we could not believe it as it was just North of the main street where we used to shop.

We wish the Gaylord community all best during this difficult time. Continue reading “Gaylord Tornado Cleanup 2022” →

The long standing haunted house on Mackinaw Island was not open till 11pm for some reason, but we did finally make it there and went through the house. The haunted house is sort of a wax museum with some animatronics and is very traditional and fun.

Dads facebook profile photo for years has been Dad and James at the top of the steps of the haunted house so we decided to take that picture again, about 12 years later.

Our favorite at the haunted house was probably the coffin that opens and a corpse sits up and turns around and looks at you. Nice effect! Continue reading “Haunted House – Mackinaw Island 2022” →

The weather was still cloudy and about 55-65 degrees so it was a very comfortable trip to the island. Once again we took the ferry across, although we did not remember the $35 charge to park. This year we stayed on main street and shopped as we felt it was too “buggy” to go into the woods as there were tons of mayflies flying around.

Stopped at Joann Fudge to get some maple fudge for Mom, plus lots of t shirts for the family at monster tee. We noticed the magic shop was gone, replace by what we think was a jewelry store.

We noticed it was just starting to get busy as this was the Friday of Memorial day. We were happy coming up earlier so we missed most of the tourist who came up for the weekend.
Continue reading “Mackinaw Island 2022” →

After our traditional smelt basket dinner at Audi’s, we went shopping at the tourist traps in Mackinaw city. We saw that the haunted house there was open so we decided to give it a whirl. All three of us went into the house and we all had a great time. The haunted house had some great animatronics and even a talking statue (projection) that gave us an introduction to the house.

Lots of scares in this haunted house and I believe this was the first time any of us had gone through this house (the one on Mackinaw Island is much older and we have done that one several times.

For the record, our favorite scene was the last one with the crazy kid animatronic running around. Continue reading “Haunted House – Mackinaw City 2022” →

Our first visit since before the pandemic was a successful one. It was the day before the Memorial day crowd would show up so we had the city pretty much to ourselves. Lots of shopping for goodies and t-shirts. Once again we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express there and they were still doing construction on something in the lobby (when we were there last time, there was also construction of some kind going on).

The breakfast was great and everyone had a great time in the city. We did notice that all the kite shops seemed to have disappeared which is unfortunate. For dinner we had pizza and wings two days in a row. Thats why its a vacation. Continue reading “Macinaw City 2022” →

We arrived at Mackinaw a little early, our check in time at the hotel was 3pm so we decided to head further North, about 50 minutes, to Saulte Ste Marie which is the Northern end of Michigan and also the Northern end of I75 (which actually starts in Florida).

When we arrived at the locks we saw something we had never seen before, a Viking cruise ship going through the locks. We had seen tankers and every other kind of vessel, but never a cruise ship.

We stopped in at the tourist traps across from the locks (the locks are run by the army corp of engineers and the tourist traps are right across the street). There certainly seemed to be alot of big foot stuff, almost like the official mascot of up north.

A great time was had by all and why not, this was the first place we went to for our honeymoon 19 years ago! Continue reading “Soo Locks – Saulte Ste. Marie 2022” →

A beautiful spring day signified the official end of winter this Mothers day. We took Mom out to eat and then spent time putting flowers on the graves at the cemetery. We noticed that they made repairs to some of the graves but a couple more needed some work. We notified them about it and I am sure they will take care of it.

Mom also enjoyed a visit to her favorite antique store, Motor City Antiques – which is also in Flat Rock along with the cemetery.

As the weather changes in the spring, different flowers pop up from the different bulbs that Mom plants, that way the look of the house changes as we go through the year. Usually we visit a few green houses in the spring to get the right hanging baskets to match the plants already in the ground.

Each spring we go through about 3 bags of mulch in the flower beds as mulch does degrade over time.

The first bulbs to come up in the spring are the tulips, and we have been asked by neighbors if they are real of fake flowers. Some of the tulips alongside the house were planted by James’ Grandma decades ago. Continue reading “Early Spring Landscape 2022” →

We had a very fun Easter this year. This will be the last year using the Easter blow molds as we decided to go with Easter lights next year (blow molds take up too much room in the garage). We added a couple Easter eggs as well but after this year we will be converting those eggs into Halloween eggs for our xenomorph face huggers.

What was notable about this year was the snow we got the next day, surely Spring cannot be far off, can it?