Lot's of parentheses back there...so ANYWAYS...the drive up went fairly well. We got all the way there...and then drove up and down Barlow Road (only for twenty minutes) looking for Fox Road...the elusive Fox Road. Golly gee. After even pulling in to the gated community of Lost Lake Woods and backing out because we thought we were wrong, we finally decided to stop at the Citgo down the way and chat up the folks behind the counter to figure out where the heck we were supposed to be. Turns out the gated community WAS Fox Road and that our intuition was correct. Why there was no street sign, I'm not quite sure. And I mean, MapQuest could have been a pal and thrown us a hint about the whole gated expanse of land that was to be our destination. Oh well, they are forgiven.
So, we arrived at our destination thanks to Amy coming to our rescue in the purple Tracker. Received a lovely salutation from the grands and then schlepped everything inside! We got the basement area...then got the tour since there were multiple ways to escape...so many doors! The cool spiral staircase took us through the bedroom, the back staircase took us through the garage, there was a door straight to the outdoor world from the basement...a little crazy. If there were ever a fire it would probably be hard to choose!
For our first activity we took the neighbor's golf cart out to tour the Lost Lake Woods' surroundings...played in a park, almost died sliding around on gravel, scoped out the club house, and enjoyed the freezing cold gray weather. Then we went on into Alpena to take a look around. Twas a cute place! Stopped at Lake Huron for a quick gander and feel of the water, picked up t-shirts to tie dye at KMart and then stopped in Jo Ann Fabric for the actual dye supplies (which took an eternity because the lady couldn't work the register and I was trying to get the sale price...gee whiz), toured the little town, and then headed back for some dinner! Beer in the Rear Chicken it was! YUM. Had some of that, did some tie dying, and then played a rousing game of dominoes. I was doing well...until the end rounds...but I ended up in third place so it was alright.
Day two...woke up to the rain, so our horseback riding time slot was moved to the following day. Boo. We just hung out most of the day...ate a little, watched a lot of TV, counted down the minutes until The Bachelorette was to be on, went out to the stables to see the horses (since I had never been in close proximity of one...AHH) and fell in love with Johnny, played with the barn cats, more TV, a trip to the store in Lincoln for cake mix, frosting, marshmallow fluff, chips, and my favorite Queso (MMM!), hamburgers for dinner, cupcake creation, BACHELORETTE! (thank goodness the two stupidest ones were finally kicked...took long enough), stupid storm warnings that interrupted our viewing experience and didn't even pertain to our area, a lot of cupcake consumption, and then bed.
Day three, the final day. :( Got up for a great breakfast at Connie's. A HUGE cinnamon roll that the three of us split (SO good and nutty and delicious) at the cute local little place (we were surrounded by pretty much just old men...and one old woman). Hung out there for awhile and then headed back to prepare for the horseback riding experience...woah nervous. Since the Maj is terrified of horses, we've never ridden them, much less gotten very close to them so I was slightly shaking in my tennis shoes. I was given Cinnamon...the horse that likes people but not other horses...so I had to be in the back so no one was all up in his rear on the trail. Anyways...Cinnamon loves to look around and take in the scenery rather than focus on keeping up with the rest of the group. We had a grand ol' time lollygagging around in the back, grabbing meals to go along the way, until she would realize that 'Oh hey, look how far away the rest of the horses are, maybe I should catch up or something' and then would start RUNNING to catch up. Oooh boy. I was only thwapped by a few tree branches, only got one scrape from when she tripped and I hit the saddle funny with my hand, and naturally my butt is RATHER bruised. Yikes. But all in all, it was really fun! I didn't know I would actually like horses...and who knew their noses were so soft? Hahahaha.
After that experience we headed back to the home unit, ate some chips and queso, and packed up to leave. :( The attempt to get home was a little bit more difficult than getting up there...
We didn't have the MapQuest directions for the opposite direction, but we're not THAT dumb so we figured we could do it...we got a ways out there...about an hour, when we encountered a stoplight. Now, there aren't very many stoplights up in those parts and I remembered a Subway attached to a Shell station, so we took our turn here...turns out it was not correct. It took about a half an hour to fix that one, but it was fine once we got back on track and we found a lot more lakes hidden back there! So yeah...turns out there were three stoplights in this 20-some mile stretch annnd yeah. Oh well. Then it was smooth sailing the rest of the way thank goodness.
Now I'm home! And sore in the buttocks region...but glad to be back in the company of warm weather...the whole low 40s and rainy stuff, not so great in the summertime...
No comments:
Post a Comment