SOMEWHERE IN CENTRAL FLORIDA — I admit we were ambivalent about spending the final two days of our trip in this part of the Sunshine State. Don’t get me wrong. We were excited to see where our old friend Sparky plans to spend half the year so she can golf all winter and avoid Michigan when walking to your mailbox with a snow shovel and industrial ice cleats on your boots is a fashion statement. Not that I would know anything about this. It’s a big step. Our snowbird friend is ready to fly, and we’ve never seen her happier. Her new housemate and friend of 30 years is a…
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Geeks and dolls
Darn, I wish I’d kept my 1964 set of official Beatles dolls. I can still remember the cardboard box they came in marked with “Fragile” in green letters. A set of four was $3.77 at Woolworth’s. Each lad was a smidge over 4 inches tall with a full autograph on his musical instrument. They even had “real Beatle hair with lifelike expressions,” according to an old advertisement I found online. Owning a complete set of these meant you were the coolest kid on the block. Sadly, somewhere along the road from adolescence to puberty, I lost the Paul McCartney doll, meaning my neighborhood coolness level dropped exactly 25%. I still…
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Bumbled
ANNA MARIA ISLAND – It’s Sunday, our first full day in paradise, and I’m sick as a dog with a rotten cold and sore throat. To be clear: I am not feverish. It’s early, and Rebecca’s still sleeping, bless her heart. Maddie’s half-asleep with one eye on the egrets roaming outside our patio and both ears on anything dumb enough to breach our tastefully-decorated condo in Bradenton Beach. Still drowsy, I walk into our rented condo’s kitchen at 7:45 a.m. to make a warm salt water cocktail and gargle away my ickiness. To escape some of Michigan’s winter, we’re renting a place at Runaway Bay, a lovely complex off Cortez…
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Are we there yet?
SOMEWHERE ON I-75 – Most people find the drive down I-75 south from Michigan to Florida long and boring. Count me as one of them. It’s all I can do not to lose what’s left of my mind during the 1,300-mile journey into America’s other undrained swamp. Last week was no different. We left at 6 a.m. on a Tuesday and drove for 13 hours until 7 p.m. that evening. We even made it past Atlanta through rush hour and then to Macon. That’s 830 miles, give or take a few pit stops. Good grief. Not exactly my word choice, but yes. Endless. You keep going and see signs for Valdosta every so often until you’ve just about had…
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Thumbs up
I knew we’d left too late in the day to make it to Mackinaw City when signs for Frankenmuth sparked this thought: “Rebecca, when is the last time you had chicken?” That’s right about the time we spotted billboards for Bronner’s, the world’s largest Christmas store, and Jellystone Park Camp Resort, about two hours north of Detroit. But we kept driving. Yogi Bear wasn’t going to steal food from these savvy tourists to restock his pic-a-nic basket. Sorry, Boo-Boo. Yogi Bear Now who’s smarter than the av-er-age bear? For decades, Frankenmuth has been known for chicken and Christmas, as well as the Bavarian Inn and Zehnder’s, two of the nation’s largest independently owned restaurants. Driving through…
