Along The Road

Which way to the Getaway?

So, eastern Michigan to western Wisconsin...what is there to say? That even being empty the place is still crowded? That when everyone is getting away the places they've gone to are as full as the places they've left?

I drove up the western shore of Lake Huron. Of course, having as a child read The Last Mohican, and stories of Davy Crocket and Daniel Boone the name of the Huron, one of the great lost nations of our land, conjured images quite different from the endless line of vacation homes, resorts, motels, and the attendant shopping centers and all the rest of the supports required by vacationing Americans (including fudge, tee-shirts and moccasins) that I actually encountered. Even crossing the great Mackinack Bridge made only a difference of degree not kind. It was too early in the season for the endless lines of motor homes that must crowd the highways in June, July and August, perhaps even May and September. Even the wayside rest stops hadn't been opened yet. But the place is still full of people, spread out it's true, density increasing and decreasing as one passes through towns with no real purpose anymore except as coffers for the tourist dollars that spill from city folks pockets in summer like the rain and snow that falls during the rest of the year. Even in winter most of the "residents" are there for recreation rather than to wrest a living from the land: hunt, fish, snowmobile, ski (very slowly), and most of the rest are there to support them.

There is still some industry in the You Pee (U.P., for Upper Penninsula...locals sometimes refer to themselves as "yoopers"), mostly resource extraction: forest products, sand and gravel (thank you, glaciers), and agriculture. You can recognize the real locals by the messiness of their homesteads, in stark contrast to the manicured lawns of the leisure class.

And what about Wisconsin?

It's the wierdest thing...there's not that much difference between Wisconsin and Michigan, yet there's a world of difference. The towns are curiously decentralized, the businesses spread out among the trees, "downtown" characterized mostly by the presence of the post office rather than by a collection of buildings. Even in the larger towns of Michigan it is hard to find an espresso joint, while in Wisconsin one might find a cappuccino almost in the middle of nowhere.

And that, for me, is really the essence of this leg in the journey, that in MI/WI there isn't anywhere that is truly in the middle of nowhere...everywhere is somewhere. You might be driving down a rutted gravel road, surrounded by nothing but trees, when suddenly, well before you've had the time to feel that you have really left, you find that you've arrived.

There's simply no way to get away.

 

ps: If you are ever in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, you must stop by Cafe 420, whose reality is seriously funkier than its web site would suggest.