TURN OFF THE PAVED ROAD... BE STILL WHILE THE SUN SETS

OK, I hate it too when peeps be braggin' about their fabulous vacays to WTFever... and how much fun they had...but how much money it cost or didn't cost, because frankly, not all of us can afford vacay, or time off, period... and all their corny cell-o-phone pics of them kissing on/in the beach/mountaintop/live volcanic lava flow, etc.

So I will not bore you with any of those. Mainly because I left my camera with PengBlue, so she could photograph herself being awesome next to her drawing of little red tree frogs that was made of awesome and featured in a community art show. Which, yes, we, as bad parents, missed by going on the only alone weekend we've been on in years.

(LIKE IN EIGHT YEARS. K? SO DON'T BE HATIN.'  ;) )

I did take some marvy pics on my little POS cell phone, none of which I can email to myself, now... Which is sad because we went to this little town which has the same name as B3. Yes, three American towns share his name. One in Pennsylvania, one in Cali and one in Northern Michigan. There also used to be an airport in New York, but now it's named after a dead president or something. (They are all spelled differently too, an none of them the way B3 spells his.) Anyway, I would have loved to show him "B3, Michigan." As it is, he is looking at little blobs, which are signs, on my crappy little celly screen. Oh well. But then that's kind of the point. Which I will get to later in the post.

BoyLovey and I ran away up the west coast of Lake Michigan to the teeny tiny tip of the little finger for a couple of snowy days. bL has never been up that far and I used to camp there most weekends of my teen years with my family. This is where Lani, The Unicorn Princess, was born in my mind. This is where the myth of the Unicorn met the legend of the Mermaid and caused the fairy tale to take shape.

Believe me, you don't have to go to Key West (which was lovely the one and only time I went in high school) to enjoy exotic blue water that never ends. CLICK HERE (Manitou Passage) (btw, these are all google image pages and if you wait for the whole page to load, my selected image will come up larger, so you can view it better)

There are even Islands. VIEW (North and South Manitou Islands, off Glen Arbor)

And here's my totally gratuitous "I'VE SLEPT HERE" LINK (North Manitou Island), but not this time because it was too cold for primitive camping and backpacking.

Anyhow, I wanted to show this place to bL and scout out some good places to take our kids in the summer. Turns out there's not much open this time of year, but we did eat the best soup and paninies we've ever had in Leland. The coffee was also amazing. It was like ten degrees outside, mind you. We might have passed it up if we hadn't needed a pee break and to warm up. Stone House Bread Cafe ( www.stonehousebread.com ) was DELICIOUS. And the really cool thing? Leland, MI is located just above the 45th Parallel which means it is exactly halfway between the equator and north pole.

So yeah, lunch on top of the world one day, and in the woodlands of our non typically named child by the same name, but spelled differently, the next. Pretty cool huh? Which btw, if we hadn't turned off a few paved roads "just to see..." would never have happened.

There aren't words for little things like this. It was not an expensive little trip by most standards. The bulk of it was gas and lodging. With the exception of lunch at Stone House Bread Cafe, I cooked in our condo (affordable, thanks to the off season)  and made my own sandwiches on the road. We swam in the condo complex pool and our main entertainment was the sunrise and sunset.

Now, a Lake Michigan sunset rarely disappoints...CHECK THIS... (sunset)... But Saturday night, we were treated to an amazing and completely unexpected moment. The sun up there, does this awesome thing where it drops like an egg into a boiling pot and makes a flash. This is usually seen best when there is little or no cloud cover. Saturday was very overcast. But the water got pink, the lower the sun sank behind the clouds, which also turned all sorts of orange and pink. It was pretty. But then it got awesome. The egg dropped down below the cloud bank and set the sky, the water and the snow covering the dunes in front our picture window on fire with color!! The walls in the condo glowed. And then, the most amazing thing happened. As the ball of sun sank into the water/horizon, fingers of light shot up to the sky behind a lighthouse in the harbor, making it look like nothing less than the hand of the Divine. Whether it was reaching up to the heavens or down to us, is hard to say, but it was beautiful. And sacred.

It truly is the little things in life, Young Lovers. We could have gone in the summer with all it's fishing, sailing and swimming and spent a fortune doing it. Or we could have spent the same fortune skiing, tobogganing and snow machining. But that sunset couldn't be bought. The thrill of sitting in a quiet corner that is both edge and top of the earth can't be bought. And no price will give a little boy the thrill of knowing his mom and dad turned off the main drag just to be able give him a piece of his collective world heritage.

So take time. Do the thing. Whatever it is. Grow your soul. And it will sing.

On a side note. This condo is one bL and I were checking out for a possible future home. THIS is the actual view from my picture window where I would be writing... Sooooooooo, how much work do you think I'll be able to get done from here? ;)

Oh, and confidential to my girLovey: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY!! <3


                                        <3FROM ME 2U, LOVE, RALEY BLUE <3