We're off to Mackinac!

Could also be titled: Drunk People Are Dumb, and I'm One of Them.

You know how you just remember some of the most random shit from childhood, that doesn’t have really any reason to stick with you? For example, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember in either 5th or 6th grade when I attended St. Joseph’s Academy in Adrian, MI, we were putting on a puppet show in the school gym (I’m sure it involved basically all of the humanities, because we made said puppets from papier-mâché, had to make up a story, and had a song as part of the performance). Now I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what the storyline involved, or what my papier-mâché puppet looked like, but I do remember the song that we made up for this shitshow: the incredibly clever lyrics were, “We’re off to Mackinac!” repeated charmingly over and over (and over and over) again to the tune of C F G A G F. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

It’s just past Labor Day weekend, so our house is now bedecked in fall apparel (I have an affinity for seasonal décor, so general fall stuff goes up just after Labor Day, Halloween stuff from October 1st, followed by turkeys and whatnot on November 1st……shit gets tricky around Veteran’s Day, when I like to put up the Christmas tree, and as soon as I eat my turkey on Thanksgiving, away go the pilgrims and up go the Nutcrackers while the Lions are keeping with tradition and losing their football game. I used to not have any Thanksgiving/Christmas overlap, and nothing got decorated before the Halloween explosion, but I’ve mellowed in my years and now do whatever I want to enhance my holiday enjoyment). Whatevs; we all have our little traditions.

There are a bunch of things I am loving about living in the Yoop, but one of the best parts is getting to see my cousin, Stevie, on a more regular basis. Speaking of traditions, Stevie and his wife, Tricia, have an annual Labor Day tradition that involves them staying a few nights on (the aforementioned) Mackinac Island. This year, since I now live just a couple of hours from the island instead of 16, Jack and I got a room in St. Ignace and planned to meet up with them for a day of festivities. We were both extremely tired from an emotional and long work weekend (everybody else’s weekends are our busy days at work; Mondays & Tuesdays are our version of Saturday & Sunday). I’m serious when I say an emotional weekend…..I lost my shit completely at the end of my Saturday shift. I’m talking bawling in the middle of the restaurant, while Jack, Becca, and Josh rotated hugs, bawled all the way home (thankfully I was passenging, not driving), and then cried myself to sleep. Nothing specific, I was just really fucking tired, plus it’s really fun sometimes to be a 40-something-year-old woman. Speaking of work and 40-something women, one of the weekend lowlights was when a 40-something woman (not me) who had been out drinking for a while at the tiki bar walked inside the restaurant to the bathroom, puking out of her hands the entire way.

There are so many things about this.

First of all, you were just outside…..why wouldn’t you puke out there? I personally would have made a run for the woods, but would happily have projectile vomited over the railing before walking inside with it. In my mouth. And/or hands.

So while I was picking up chunks with a towel, mopping, and drying the floor, she came up to me and (instead of showing proper mortification or saying anything along the lines of “I’m so sorry,”) she said, “Don’t worry, I cleaned up the bathroom. I used to be in service, also.” Ummmm, what?! I really had nothing to add to the conversation, so I just said, “Awesome,” and kept drying the floor. Also, as I discovered a few minutes later, we had a very different idea of what constitutes cleaning up.

Anyway, my spirits lifted, regardless of my state of fatigue, on Monday morning when we got up to absolutely perfect island weather, coupled with my singing under my breath, “We’re off to Mackinac!" to the tune of C F G A G F. 

We caught the 10:30 ferry over, and started our Labor Daydrinking just before noon. Since we were just on the island for the day, and still sleepy, we were happy to have a lazy day of  hanging out and bar hop with the cousin instead of trying to cram a bunch of touristy stuff into 7 hours.

It was just a generally delightful time, with the highlights, I would say, being introduced to a simply spectacular new gin (Petosky Stone Botanical Gin), partaking in chambongs (apparently a new way to get you white-girl wasted in a technique that makes you think you’re being both fun AND classy (that’s a lie, btw, you’re neither. Well, probably fun, but definitely not classy)), and the Haunted Theatre following the chambongs. Fun little aside…..when going through pictures later, you see one of you and your cousin making yuck-faces at the camera, but don’t really remember why, so you text him: Why were we making our “I’m not grown up enough for sherry faces?” to which he replies: I have no recollection of this whatsoever.

You and me both, buddy.

Back to the Haunted Theatre. What a gem. The first thing they had going for them was that veterans get in for free. The second thing they had going for them was me. I’m not kidding. I am 100% the target audience at a haunted house. Sometimes to my detriment. I remember being at a haunted house at one of the casinos in Vegas, I think the Venetian but can’t be entirely sure, and having a bruise on my right knee for MONTHS after because I fell down HARD when one of the bad guys crept up on me. I’ve also walked out of a haunted house in Myrtle Beach because I panicked when we went through the pitch black tunnel that had the walls closing in as you went through. Don’t even come after me with a chainsaw…… Anyway, I don’t like leading the charge in a haunted house precisely because I’m a fucking weenie and scared of the dark, and after the Myrtle Beach incident (I was up front for that one), I’m very content to hang onto the shirt of the person in front of me and shuffle along behind. So Jack was our front man, and I was second in the lineup.

At this point, I invite you to go to the Haunted Theatre’s website Welcome to Our Vintage Haunted House - Mackinac Island Haunted Theatre and click on some of the photos so you can really get a feel for the terror that awaited within. Take care not to show your small children – it might be too much for them. What they lacked in animation, I made up for when they went in for the jump scares, for which I am the prime target and take the bait every. single. time. It was hilarious to everyone, including myself.

We took the 8pm ferry back to the mainland so that we could watch the sunset over the bridge, and it didn’t disappoint. Since we were still in peak season pricing, we’d grabbed a Priceline bargain, in which Priceline will tell you they’ll get you one of these three hotels, you just don’t know which one it is until you purchase. Since all the hotels around were going for $190/night, and Priceline was $110, I don’t care. So we ended up staying at a place with questionable continental breakfast, and lots of ceiling bugs, but a gorgeous balcony view right on Lake Huron.
Here's a nugget for your back pocket: make sure you know what room you are staying in when you go to find ice and vending, especially when you don’t have your phone with you. I’m not naming any names, but it wasn’t me.

After checking in, we went to grab some dinner since we hadn’t eaten much during the day. We went to the Driftwood, and ordered some drinks and whitefish dip at the bar, and a burrito to take back to the room. At this point in the day, I thought the whitefish dip was positively gourmet, although the picture I took of it indicates my perspective might have been a little skewed, based on the individual cracker packets that were our vessel for ye old dip.

At any rate, we get back to the room well after dark and were ready to go to town on the burrito. I open the box and all I see are chips and some lettuce and olives. I am just incensed that they’ve given us nachos instead of a burrito, and I call them to tell them that. Shortly thereafter, Jack and I were both snoring.

We woke up at stupid-o’clock the next morning, before then sun was up, and went outside to the balcony to watch it rise. We’re both incredibly hungry at this point, and since continental breakfast still has a couple of hours before it opens, we decide we’ll have some of those stupid nachos. I open the container to discover that under the stupid nachos is…… you guessed it. That missing burrito (or, as we now refer to it, the norrito). Sometimes it’s best to acknowledge that you’ve just been an absolute asshole of an idiot and hang your head in shame. Drunk people are dumb, and I'm one of them. If the crew at Driftwood ever happens to read this blog, my sincerest apologies for being such a dumb drunk person that night.

My Karen-ing aside, it was the perfect ending to the unofficial summer. It was my favorite weekend of the summer, and we even got back in time to meet up with my Garden parents at the Elks to celebrate Lonnie’s birthday, and be in bed by 7.

As Bill Belichick would say, onto the next!