Recursive* peninsulas might be one way to describe our weekend. Actually, fractals might be more appropriate. First, we spent the entire weekend rattling around the Lower Peninsula. The Big Mitten. [Note to self. Spend some time exploring The Thumb!] Our home base for the weekend was the CFam cabin on Long Point, which sticks out into Houghton Lake. Yesterday, we ventured partway up the Mission Peninsula (which sticks out into Grand Traverse Bay) but chose not to drive out on Neahtawanta Peninsula (which sticks out off the Mission Peninsula into the west arm of GT Bay). We had bizness to take care of in Gaylord and needed to make tracks. Some other day. Actually, the Mission Peninsula, gorgeous as it is, is chock-a-block with houses so not really our fave kind of place. On the other hand, there are whineries everywhere…

It would’ve been fun to spend the night with the UU in Gaylord last night but it has been months since we’ve spent time at the Cfam Group Home @ Houghton Lake so that’s were we ended up. This morning? Little Boots cafe for a gunslinger quesadilla (I always box a third of it). Our usual waitress (I’ll call her Sunny and I overheard this) is out for a while for some sort of surgery and then a vacation trip. I missed her but was a wee bit afraid to ask where she was. She is, well, I’m sure she is quite a bit older than me but beautiful and as spry as spry gets. I hope she’s okay. We were very well taken care of but that’s part of what Little Boots is all about. Took the usual Houghton Lake sort of detour (Reedsburg Dam area, etc.) on the way back to the cabin where I futzed with cleaning and laundry and a little spreadsheet prodject while the GG took a long winter’s nap. Then we walked (independently), had a teensy tinesy snacky lunchette, and hit the road again, southbound this time, sigh.

I extended our weekend as long as possible by taking the old highways as far down south as is reasonably possible. M55 to West Branch, M76 through Alger and Sterling to Standish, and finally M13 through Standish, Pinconning, Linden, and Kawkawlin. It’s a tossup whether this route is slower than taking the I75 SUV Speedway the whole way down. The speed limit is lower (but nobody really observes it) and you have to stop a few times if the lights don’t favor you and you can get stuck behind slowpokes on the northernmost two-lane stretches of the route. Then again, if you are on the Speedway, you can get stuck in miles-long backups. For me, the old roads are much more interesting than that particular stretch of the freeway. Today I was struck by how many businesses seemed to be closed up and I was trying to remember if they were open the last time we traveled that section. I could not remember. The cheese shops were all open and the outfitters and the hubcap shop will probably always be there.

Anyway, back on the Speedway at Bay City. Smooth drive overall but I still felt happy when I crossed the Washtenaw County line. Home again home again jiggety-jig. And a trip to the Plum Market has put me over 20K steps today. I was going to throw some chicken thighs in Gertrude’s oven for a quick-and-dirty dinner but they were out of chicken in that form factor so the GG will just have to suffer through some pork chops stuffed with apple and cherry. I think he’ll live.

G’night, KW

*Pretty sure “recursive” is the wrong word in this context. I’m thinking of the days when I was five years old and thinking about folding a piece of paper in half and half and half again and wondering if there would be a time when I could not fold that thing any more. For some reason people keep trying this stuff. As a kid with a piece of notebook paper, I gave up pretty early after maybe three or four folds. These people got farther than I did but I’m not sure they demonstrated anything more than I did alone in my Superior Street bedroom umpteen billion years ago. The concept is infinity and I didn’t go very far in mathematics but only because I chose music. I believe that the “limits” I learned in Calc 1 address this issue. So, peninsula upon peninsula upon peninsula upon peninsula… … … Fractals? Mathematicians? Am I at least on the right track?

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