Towards the end of July, I took a trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan to visit my friend Sidney who goes to Michigan Tech. The car ride drove me a bit crazy, I think I got a bit of cabin fever and I ran out of Audiobooks on the way back down. Also, I have Sprint lack-of-cell-service so I pretty much had no GPS, but that's okay because it's one of the signs that an adventure is about to start.
On the way up I stopped at Canyon falls in the UP and it was really cool. I love rivers and waterfalls, I don't know, maybe it's a Michigan thing because we have a shit ton of them here.
I got to Houghton and completely had no clue where her apartment was, I had no cell service, but what do ya know I pulled into the parking lot of the library. When in doubt, find the library as you can always steal the WiFi to message people with. This principle has never lead me astray.
The next day we drove around the Keweenaw Peninsula (Island cough cough), and we also visited the Jam Pot to buy some jelly from some very cheerful monks. They lived in a monastery up the hill and they made a peaceful living by making and selling every kind of jelly, jam, marmalade, and fruit butter you could think of. They were even wearing dark mid evil robes.
I was however saddened to learn a couple weeks later that there were some family friends having a camp out about two miles from the monks who were alumni of Michigan Tech had a huge pyrotechnics camp out. The main event was creating a giant volcano out of the earth, building a little village on the side and filling it with thermite. These are the guys I'm told who is responsible for several M-Tech school rules such as "no launching rockets off of the school roof." They also used to have a large bonfire with magnesium infused logs on the shore of Lake Superior. A cop came by and told them that they had to put it out and so they grabbed a log, threw it into the lake, and it kept burning. They said Sidney and I should join them next year.
We had pasties for lunch and spent the weekend climbing on rocks on the lake shore, walking along beaches, playing on sandy playgrounds, and getting bitten up by bugs. Sidney also gave me a cool tour of the campus and I was astounded that they had 3-D printers in the library just for anyone to use! The tour gave me an idea though as I found out that two hours south was Northern Michigan University, one of the three colleges in Michigan that offer Zoology as a concentration for a biology major. On my trip back down, I stopped to poke around the campus in Marquette and really liked it. I stopped by the biology department and got flyers on the classes I need to take before heading back down.
After the stress of two internships, (granted I quit the river survey one after June), It was a wonderful weekend of exploring with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I left feeling full of love and excitement for the potentials of the future.
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