The old salt in me (okay, so maybe running a 22' Cobalt on Table Rock Lake doesn't actually make me an old salt) rather likes vacationing in an area where they refer to "gales" rather than plain old wind. I just don't know that I want to vacation there during the gales.
This morning brought rain, temperatures in the low thirties, and winds in the 15-25 MPH range with gusts reaching 45 MPH. The day began to look like a loss, and then I really lost something.
Those who know me know I hate carrying a purse. I don't even like the word; I have a little Tom Bihn metro bag that actually rarely travels far from being stuffed under the seat of my car. Instead, I have a tiny little thing - I wouldn't call it a bag or even a wallet - that purposely holds nothing more than my phone, my debit card, my driver's license, and a little bit of cash. But this morning, it was no where to be found.
I tore apart the trailer. I tore apart the truck. At one point I had my arm stuffed so far underneath the driver's seat of my truck that I began to lose feeling in my fingers. I went through every jacket pocket. I dumped the laundry bag out on the floor. I pulled every cushion off the couch.
Then Dad and I drove to the last place I definitively remembered having it, a gas station some 25 miles away. I knew it wasn't there, but a tiny little glimmer of hope that it might miraculously be in their lost and found drawer was enough to draw me there. That glimmer was quickly and not very gracefully snuffed out by the slightly bearded woman behind the counter. I began to panic at the thought of a week spent with no driver's license and no debit card some 400 miles away from home.
So, back to the campground we went. I pulled a flashlight out and went to work, shining it in every nook and cranny of the trailer. And then, like a gift from above, there it was...under the back of the TV where I had stuffed it the day before trying to prop the TV up at a better angle so I could watch a movie from the couch.
With what felt like a new lease on the day - and the trip - Dad and I set off for the Michigan Maritime Museum. Although Dad couldn't wait to tell the man who took our admission that I am the director of a museum, I have mixed feelings about visiting museums. As a professor in graduate school predicted some fifteen years ago, once I began working in museums, I have since failed to see or even enjoy them in the same way. This one, however, was so simple, straightforward, and honest that it was hard not to enjoy it. A highlight was a visit to the restoration shop with its glorious smells of cedar and linseed oil and its engaging manager, who illuminated for me the virtues of using sassafrass wood in restoration, which might be a promising replacement for the white and red oak we so often use but that has issues of its own related to its acidity.
Then, the feasting began. I have a few rules when it comes to traveling. One is actually a process for mitigating, um, "cleanliness" issues with public toilets that I won't outline here. The other is an abject aversion to chain restaurants of any kind unless they are an absolute necessity during marathon interstate highway runs. In every other instance, the best of local fare must be sought, and "best" doesn't equate to "most expensive." It means the places the locals revere and the places that punctuate trips with great gastric memories. Today featured not one but two such institutions.
A slice of pie heaven is in little Fennville, Michigan, at Crane's Pie Pantry and Restaurant, open since 1919 and set in the midst of acres and acres of orchards. I try to eat healthy for the most part and yadda yadda, but darn it, good pie is good pie, and this was great pie. I love apple pie that celebrates the apples and doesn't hide under overwrought, butter-crumb-dutch-cinnamon-sugar-whatever crust. This slice of pie was all about the apple, and if I hadn't been in a public place, I would have licked the plate.
In a continued celebration of all that is great about Midwestern dining, we went to Sherman's Dairy Bar in South Haven, where a yellowed newspaper clipping on the wall celebrated the ice cream bar's opening in July 1958, complete with pony rides and balloons. I forced Dad to get over his shock at the menu price of $2.60 (when did he turn into Grandpa, who actually did live through the Depression?) and order that scoop of butter pecan he coveted so, and after they handed him a six-inch waffle cone stuffed full with another five inches of ice cream above the cone, he stopped complaining and got to work. How could a half-century -old ice cream bar with a blue cow on the roof do you wrong?
The day I had feared lost ended up being found underneath a TV and then in boats, pie, ice cream, and - finally - sunshine.
