For their 40th anniversary, my parents booked a gorgeous vacation house for the weekend. Deep in the woods of northern Michigan, we gathered together at Au Sable View Lodge for food, fun and games.
To get to the lodge, it was a long and winding drive along the snow covered roads in the evergreen forest – it was truly a winter wonderland.
As you can see, our rag tag bunch of misfits is ready to PARTY!
I couldn’t wait to get inside and start exploring. One of the first things I found was a guest book that records the names and stories of everyone who has stayed at the house. I had a great time looking through it and reading the adventures other people had shared.
The house had lots of unique decorating elements, from the snow shoe light fixtures to the historical picture books.
Some of the animals mounted on the walls had a story to tell. We learned that Dolly the buffalo lived a long and happy life on a ranch in northern Michigan. She had a very sweet temperament and was her owner’s favorite buffalo. When she died, they had her stuffed and gave her to the owners of the lodge. Now she greets all the guests who stay at the house.
This weekend was all about having fun, so we brought several games to keep us entertained. My sister, Sarah, was so pleased (insert sarcasm here) that Justin and I taught Kaden how to play Zombie Dice. For the record, Kaden was really good!
After relaxing for a while, we decided to bundle up and explore outside. The incredible views from the balcony of the lodge made it feel like we were in a treehouse!
We took Gracie for a walk along the snowy paths through the woods.
As evening set in, Justin and I got to work on a surprise for my parents. Four hours and two bottles of wine later, we called them over and presented their anniversary cake.
This year, my nephew Kaden was very specific about what he wanted for his birthday party – Batman! As his birthday approached, the poor boy was a bit under the weather, so my sister asked me to take it easy this time on the party planning. But of course, I couldn’t resist having a little fun, especially with a theme like Batman! Hey, sick or not, you only turn five once!
Though I don’t pretend to be any good at it, I enjoy baking and I love to attempt the fancy decorating I see on TV cake shows. I enlisted Justin to help with the fondant for the Batman cake and since neither one of us has really worked with it before, it was extremely challenging. We used sugar sheets for the buildings and logo. They were delicate and melted much easier than expected (which caused some unanticipated problems). But being the novices that we are, we’re pretty happy with how the cake turned out.
I created the “superhero suckers” from a template I found online and modified it to fit the Batman theme. They were adorable!
And a simple banner completed the celebration setting.
After a quiet New Year’s Eve in Laguna Beach, we got up early to spend a full day in Long Beach. Our first stop was the Aquarium of the Pacific to see their astonishing collection of sea creatures.
The seahorses were helplessly cute!
There were numerous species of jellyfish on display. I could have stayed and photographed their graceful dances for the rest of my life.
They had a touch pool with sea anemones, sea urchins and starfish, so Justin made some new friends.
The sea otters put on a delightful show with their adorable antics!
From above the water, the sawfish looked intimidating. But from the underwater viewing station, he looked like such a friendly chap.
The sand tiger shark, however, did not.
After the Aquarium, we walked over to the Queen Mary to tour the elegant ocean liner.
It felt like we had stepped back in time as we walked the decks of the grand ship.
For our last day in town – or to be more accurate, out in the desert – Justin’s mom and stepdad thought it would be fun to take a little road trip down the stretch of Route 66 that runs near their house. The historic highway runs from Chicago to Santa Monica and someday I’d love to drive the whole way to see all the interesting curiosities it has to offer. It isn’t maintained as well as it used to be and some spots are bumpy and beat up, but that just adds to the adventure… Sometimes the journey is the destination.
We hit the road pretty early so we could stop for breakfast at an internationally famous diner. The restaurant served as the location for the 1987 German film Bagdad Cafe. If you enjoy slightly strange and eccentric movies, it’s definitely worth watching. And if you enjoy greasy diner food, this place is definitely worth visiting. Believe it or not, it draws tourists in from all over the world, especially Europe.
After we placed our order, I got up to wander around and do some urban exploring. It’s not every day that this Midwest girl is on a former California movie set, so I had to check it out!
They keep a guest book for visitors to sign, domestic and international. The little diner has hosted so many guests through the years, they’ve gone through a stack of books!
There’s even a geocache in the Cafe! Justin’s family introduced me to the high tech game of hide and seek, and we always seem to find a few with them whenever we visit California.
After our breakfast adventure, we jumped on the road again and drove out to Amboy Crater.
From the parking lot, it was about a mile hike out to the crater.
After a steep climb, we were greeted by the view of the beautiful hidden meadow. There’s also a geocache hidden here, and Justin posed proudly near it, before we cleared away the rocks and uncovered the treasure.
Things were going really well… We’d had a great hike out to the crater, a safe climb up, and found the geocache hidden within. We decided to climb all the way up to the ledge and take in the view from on top of the world. As we started up the trail, Justin spoke the fateful words: “Be careful, the rocks are loose. Don’t slip!”
A few seconds later, I took a step, lost my footing and went down hard. I was lucky enough to land on a jagged lava rock, which slammed into my left thigh. It hurt so bad, I couldn’t even scream – it knocked the wind out of me completely.
Witnessing my very ugly and uncoordinated fall from a distance, Justin ran down the hill and his mom ran up to make sure that I hadn’t knocked myself unconscious. Except for a few small scrapes on my hands, there was no blood – just a throbbing pain in my leg. I sat there for a few minutes to catch my breath, and when I was able to speak again, I announced that I was done climbing for the day. They could carry on without me and continue to the top of the crater, but I would not be joining them.
Justin refused to let me quit, so I reluctantly stumbled to my feet and limped up the remainder of the path. When we reached the summit, I was so glad he’d forced me to my feet. The view was breathtaking! I had to have a shot of our triumphant group on top of the crater, so I set up the camera and crawled over before the self timer counted down. Don’t let that smile fool you, I’m in intense pain in the shot below, but it was worth it.
It was a 360 degree view of amazing! On a railroad in the distance, Justin spotted a train with over 100 cars. We figured it was just over a mile long, and it’s still barely visible in the shot below.
When it was time to make the climb down, Justin decided to be daring and walk the entire perimeter of the ledge of the crater. The path got pretty narrow in places with a steep drop, so it made me nervous to watch. I only looked up twice as he made his way down the far side.
When we arrived back at the car, I threw an ice pack on my leg to slow the swelling that had begun. We hit the road again and made a quick pit stop for some ibuprofen. A few pills later, I felt much better.
We continued on to the Kelso Dunes. When I stepped out of the car, I declared that I would hike as long as the pain in my leg allowed, but I had no intention of climbing all the way to the top.
As we hiked up the dunes, the stunning beauty of landscape kept my mind off the pain, so I kept going.
When we were about eighty percent of the way to the summit, I decided that since I’d come this far, it would be silly to stop now. So we took a little break so I could rest for a bit and then continued to the top.
We made it! We conquered the Kelso Dunes! The view was unbelievable… well worth pushing through the pain and all the sand that ended up in our shoes!
Winter is a great time to wander through the desert – the temperatures are tolerable and most of the dangerous critters that live there are hibernating. We spent a sunny day exploring the sights of Joshua Tree National Park and enjoying the desert’s quiet time of year.
California is famous for many things – one of them is earthquakes. And you can’t mention California earthquakes without bringing up the San Andreas Fault. No one knows when the next big one will strike, we only know that it will, and this particular fault line will probably have something to do with it.
Now, I’m just a kid from the Midwest who didn’t have to worry about surviving such a disaster in my part of the country while growing up, so I’ve always found earthquakes eerie and fascinating. Standing on the mountain top and gazing out for miles across the valley, I felt completely powerful and completely vulnerable at the same time, but it was amazing. It was also really windy!
My mom is one of those people who believes that one day a giant earthqauke is going to break the state of California off the North American tectonic plate completely and send it crashing into the ocean. She’s also afraid of heights and ledges. So Justin and I couldn’t resist having a little fun at her expense and posing for an artist interpretation of what it would look like if the big one were to hit at the moment we stood on the edge of the fault line where it’s most likely to hit. As you can see, it’s pretty dramatic.
Our last stop of the day was a place in the park called Rattlesnake Canyon – named in honor of it’s population of, you guessed it, rattlesnakes! Fortunately, the little buggers were hibernating when we came through, so we were able to wander around in only a minimal amount of danger.
Justin climbed to the top of this huge rock formation and yelled down to me that the view was worth the climb, so I scurried up to join him.
He was right! The sun had just set behind the mountains and all the colors seemed to glow. I can see why the rattlesankes prefer this spot!
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