It's a long way: May 2013

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First leg was to head due north to Marquette, in spring. It was March last time I was there, which was still spring, but you can see the difference.

Here is Lake Superior in March:

And here is Lake Superior in May during break-up(courtesy of Misa):

The Marquette Community Garden offered up some soil for me to put my hands into (yay!) as well as mulch-shoveling manual labor. The fruit of that labor is going to be pesto. Lots and lots of pesto. And tomatoes.

An evening pancake craving led to...

And a sugar craving for Doncker's salted caramels and gummy bears led to a candy legos impulse buy. Are these not the most amazing idea? They actually work!

The following pictures of snowshoeing I'm including for a few reasons even though these are from March. 1) they're with my favorite Marquette person. 2) look at the sky. and 3) there's just something about walking on a frozen lake.

Let's see if this video works?

Here I am. In the most beautiful city on earth, at least in my world. With this blog, I will share with you the story of my journey all the way west.

I hope Antje Duvekot doesn't sue me for this blog. If my trip had a theme song this is it.

I left Flint, MI on Friday May 17th. On Thursday, I took a picture of one last Flint fire, below. They've really grown on me. They help the city metamorphose. They also create smoke which smells like campfire but is not campfire, and create stunning imagery of fireplace mantles with chimneys reaching for the sky out of burnt out basement pits. They create a market for fill dirt.

I will miss Flint. I feel like I have street cred now, however I know that I lived a very charmed and protected Flint existence that involved driving everywhere. And now I've driven quite a bit away. The death, debt, and Tigers headlines will have to be read by others:

Here's an example of the quirky awesomeness unique to Flint enjoyed just before leaving: poetry on abandoned buildings, and Flint public art project musical concerts in condemned buildings involving homemade musical instruments built on the skeletons of footpedal sewing machines... The music involved playing conch shells, whistling, pots and cups, and an egg slicer.