Before I share my exciting summer vacation, I feel I should explain why I haven’t been posting blogs for a while. First, let me make this perfectly clear: it’s not my fault; it’s Joe Biden’s fault or Obama’s. I have absolutely no evidence to prove my claim, but do I really need any? It works for those at the highest levels of our government, so why not me? I also shot a 6-under-par and won the club championship for the 78th time when I last went golfing. Don’t believe me? Prove me wrong. I was also taken hostage by ICE, deported to my home country of El Salvador…confused me too…escaped, swam across the Gulf of whatever it’s called, got back to my normal life, and only then found my computer. Just in case you are wondering, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Now, back to my vacation. We make the same trip every year. The end. Only kidding. We did do some of the same things we do every year around this time, but we had some different experiences this trip.
Each year my wife and I travel back to the ancestral homeland of me, Chicagoland. I never actually lived within the city limits, but I did work there. People like me, born in Berwyn, a stone’s throw from the city proper, apparently are not allowed to say we’re from Chicago. Many of us do it when we are away from the area because most people have no clue where Berwyn, Elmwood Park, Hillside, Countryside, or Hodgkins are located, but if we say Chicago, they get the general idea. Yes, we live and die with our Chicago teams (mostly die), we love Chicago hot dogs, Italian beef, and deep-dish pizza, and we have that strong Chicago accent, or I’ve been told. Those snooty city residents won’t let us claim Chicago as ours. Without us from outside the city, the White Sox would never have anyone at their games. Enough of that and back to the story.
Our first stop is a hotel centrally located near relatives of mine, and we have a family get-together. For those of us still alive, and some barely, we enjoy sharing old stories, talking about future plans, having a Guinness or two, and then moving along. Before we head to our main destination in Michigan for fishing, we spend a day making sure to eat our fill of Chicago hot dogs, Italian beef, White Castle sliders, and pizza, and we don’t have to be within the city limits. My youngest is the one who craves those sliders, and riding with him after he eats them could become a hazardous waste issue.
I was thrown by one thing. Television programs I watch begin at a different time in the Midwest. They come on much later. One good thing about living on the West Coast is that our football games begin at 10:00 a.m., and we are usually done with our full day of football by 8:00 p.m. Those poor folks on the East Coast have to wait for their games to begin at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., and sometimes the games run past midnight. I’m sure the number of workers calling in sick on the East Coast on a Monday after the game is really high.
We eventually headed off to our first vacation destination: Bass Lake, Michigan, a small lake in western Michigan that is connected to Lake Michigan by a small channel. If you take a boat ride through the channel, you will be transported back to the movie African Queen. It is jungle-like as you move through the channel. After about a two-block twisting journey, it opens up to a beautiful beach and Lake Michigan.
My family first came to this small lake in 1963. The story about that is interesting on its own, and I will share it one day. I have been traveling back almost every year, even after moving my family to California. It is my Nirvana. The “quenching” of the activity of the grasping mind and its related suffering, stresses, and unease, not the grunge band out of Seattle.
Before our trip, my wife and I were glued to our weather app trying to see what to expect when we arrived in Michigan. Our biggest surprise when we landed in Chicago was that the smoke was so thick it was like a brown fog that smelled like a wildfire. We folks living in California know that aroma. All the smoke we saw was from giant fires in the Province of Ontario in Canada. I thought the only things Canada exported to the U.S.A. were angry hockey players missing a lot of teeth, snowbirds who crowd our golf courses and hoard our tee times in the winter, niceness, and a pretty respectable crop of comedians. All the smoke made me feel like I was back in California waiting for an evacuation notice.
The weather at Bass Lake, according to our apps, was supposed to be in the high 80s with high humidity and rain almost the whole week. We believed what we read, and that was our first mistake. I’m glad the apps are no more reliable than weather men…oops, persons. We left our jackets at home thinking we wouldn’t need them. The first day was a little warm, and we did have a sprinkling of rain. From there on, the bottom dropped out of the temperature, the clouds disappeared, and we had to rush to a store to buy hooded jackets.
Cool weather does have an advantage: better fishing. It was one of the best weeks of fishing in years. We caught several large bass and a very good-sized Northern Pike. We also went on a charter on Lake Michigan to fish for salmon. In our case, it was quality, not quantity. We caught three really nice-sized King Salmon. As a result, we walked away with 40 pounds of salmon fillets. My wife and I will not see any of those since my son took them home to his house in Wisconsin and filled his extra freezer with them and the ones he caught in years past. He will not go hungry during the apocalypse. He was nice enough to cook some of our catch while we visited his house after our Bass Lake trip. They were delicious, and I’m pissed off.
We wrapped up our Bass Lake portion of the trip, but instead of heading down the highway back to Chicago, we joined my two sons on the Badger, a car ferry that crosses Lake Michigan, and left from Ludington, Michigan, on our way to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, straight west across the big lake. After we landed in Manitowoc, it was about an hour’s drive to my son’s brand-new house. It’s a very nice house located on 2.3 acres, which I think he is trying to turn into a farm. I will say this: he is very ambitious. I remember my grass-cutting, leaf-raking, and snow-shoveling days and think, thank goodness, I’m glad that’s not me. He has a big job ahead of him, but he is young and stupid—I mean, self-starting—and I’m sure it will turn out just like he wants it to.
Our second night at my son’s house, my wife and I were treated to a thunder and lightning display that looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie. I woke my wife up so she could experience it. It was quite the show.
The next day my wife and I planned some exploring, so we headed to the city of Oshkosh. Yes, the place where those bib overalls were made, but not any more. The city is located right on the western shore of Lake Winnebago and right in the center. We drove around, saw the sights, and saw a few vintage aircraft that were leaving after the annual EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Show, which is held in Oshkosh. A B-17 followed by a group of WWII fighter planes flew over our heads while trailing smoke. How cool was that? After our Oshkosh visit, we were planning to travel north to Appleton, Neenah, and Menasha. All located on the northwest shore of Lake Winnebago. My oldest son’s office is located there, and he used to live in Neenah. It’s a beautiful area, and we were going to have lunch and look around. We made a small change of plans and decided to head back to my son’s current house, which is just west of the area we were heading, then go there. When we arrived, we noticed that the skies were turning black and the clouds were starting to swirl, and… “It really was no miracle. What happened was just this. The wind began to switch, the house to pitch, and suddenly the hinges started to unhitch.” The Wizard of Oz…well, it could have happened.
Honestly, it wasn’t that far-fetched. While at his house, I noticed finger clouds hanging from the storm clouds, and they started moving in a circular motion. It was in the distance, and we were safe, but we had no idea what was in store for Menasha, Neenah, and Appleton. As a downpour began at our location, tornadoes were forming and devastating the towns just east of us. We didn’t know for a few hours, but the damage started showing up on social media, and it was shocking. My son was able to get in touch with friends whose homes were affected by the tornadoes, but he couldn’t reach his office. Fortunately, his friends were safe—thank God—and the damage around them was light. He didn’t find out until the next day that his place of work was not touched, but power was down for a large area. Our vacation this year ended up being more exciting than we expected. We headed south from my son’s and spent one more night in “Chicagoland.” We used this last day to get our fill of more hot dogs and pizza. I also stocked up on my Chicago teams’ merchandise, and that is all of them: Fly the W, Bear Down, Go Go White Sox, Go Hawks, and Da Bulls.
Our flight home was uneventful, and when we arrived back in SoCal, the temperatures weren’t so bad. We are already planning for next year’s trip, and we’ll be prepared. We’re bringing out jackets.
bbriley.net 