Back Home to Michigan

Jay Nordlinger just wrote about returning home to Michigan in a recent Detroit News column.

These paragraphs resonated, though really his entire column did:

When I was a kid, I would spend a chunk of each summer Up North, mostly with my grandparents. I remember the long drives on I-75 and M-33 and then hitting the back roads. There were no DVD players to pull my gaze or iPods to fill my ears — just a vision of green forests and the hypnotic hum of tires on asphalt. We always went the same way and I knew every curve and bump.
Toward the end of the trip, we'd go west for five or six miles on a straight stretch of blacktop. Then we'd turn right at a four-way intersection. This was the sign that we were just a few minutes away from lakes and creeks and trails and bug hunting and perch fishing and blueberry picking and all the things that made Up North so special, then and now.

"Up north" is a place I haven't been for far too long. It might be the nicest place in the country. In fact, Sleeping Bear Dunes was just rated the most beautiful spot in America.

If we have children some day,  I would love to take two weeks and rent a cottage by a lake, or stay near Traverse City, and visit those small shops and swim in those clear lakes. It's an idyllic place. I'm glad others recognize it, too.