#25 Take a road trip with no advance planning… DONE!
To be honest, when I made my list of 25 things to do before I turn 25, I wasn’t sure this one would actually happen.
You see… I am a perpetual planner. For example, I keep a calendar on my fridge solely for planning out our dinners in advance. In college, I made a scale model of our dorm room and its furniture in order to plan out where things should go before we moved any of it.
The same preference for planning extends to our travels. When Aaron and I take trips, it frequently looks like this: We leave the house at the scheduled time, armed with a binder full of hotel reservations and Google maps, all separated by colored tab dividers.
Part of my passion for planning stems from my thrift. It’s just not very economical to take off in a car without a clue where you’re going. You can end up wasting a lot of time and spending a lot of money that you might not have, had you chosen a destination and booked a hotel in advance.
For this trip, though, I was ready for a change. Not that I wanted to spend a bunch of money or have an unproductive trip, but I figured there had to be some benefits to NOT planning everything out in advance…
We departed from Ladysmith, Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon, armed with some maps and travel brochures for Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, but not much of an idea of which direction to head. Here’s what it looked like as we discussed which way to go:
After some deliberation, we decided to head north toward the town of Bayfield, Wisconsin and eventually head east along the southern coast of Lake Superior. A few hours later, we arrived in the area. It took us a bit to find a hotel that was in our price range, but we finally booked a room in the nearby town of Ashland. We then headed up to Bayfield, prepared to spend a wonderful afternoon and evening there. That was kindof a bust. We soon found out that pretty much everything we wanted to do either cost too much money or was closed on Sunday evenings. I suddenly found myself wishing we’d planned our schedule better. Bummed, we turned back to Ashland. We did enjoy a nice view of the lake there, but when we tried to find some good local ice cream, we failed and ended up at Dairy Queen. Too bad, I thought. If only we’d done some research on local ice cream parlors before we went out…
We were determined to make Day Two better than the first. We got up bright and early, loaded up our cooler with groceries and took off in the direction of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. After five hours of driving, we knew it must be just a little bit farther. Aaron had me check the map to verify how far away we were. As I was looking over our route trying to find the roads we were crossing, he mentioned something about Rapid River. “Rapid River?” I said. “Rapid River?! Oh. my. gosh. You are not going to believe this…” We had taken a wrong turn about an hour earlier and were now completely on the south end of the peninsula when we’d meant to be on the north.
Needless to say, we were very upset. So far, much of our trip had felt like waste, and now here we were, totally in the wrong place with no idea what to do next. We finally decided to give up on Pictured Rocks for the day and headed to nearby Indian Lake to camp for the night. Man, am I glad we did. It was here that we found the Kitch-iti-kipi spring, which was an absolute surprise to me in its beauty. (Read more about it here) That night we pitched our tent right next to the lake and enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the water. Maybe this trip was going to be alright after all!
Over the next four days, we made a loop around the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan, seeing a number of wonderful sights such as the quaint town of Mackinaw City, the powerful Tahquamenon Falls, and… yes, finally… the absolutely beautiful Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We drove 1,100 miles, spent over 24 hours in the car, and over the span of two days put our feet in three of the Great Lakes. (You can read all about our trip from Aaron’s perspective at our family blog.)
All in all, it was a great trip. I really appreciated the flexibility to make decisions about what to do next based on what we were feeling at the time rather than what was on our agenda. Lunch by the beach? Sure, why not! Take a walk out to that lighthouse? Ok!
Did we waste time on this trip? Definitely. Did we spend more money than we could’ve? Probably. Was it worth it?? Totally!
Progress Report: April 3, 2009
Days left to complete list: 405
#9 Be debt-free - With the help of our imminent tax refund, we’ll pay off our last student loan by the end of the summer.
#11 Have a garden – Pulled out some seed packets today to see when to plant them. Verdict: May or June
#12 Be consistently on time - I’m doing fairly well at this, surprisingly enough. Will keep working…
#14 Make up a recipe – Had a super yummy dish at Macaroni Grill recently. Planning to try to make it myself, with a few alterations. Does that count as “making up a recipe?”
#15 Weigh what’s on my driver’s license - Lost two pounds. 
Haha!
#16 Get totally caught up on my scrapbooks – Went on a scrapbooking retreat last week and knocked out a quarter of my college album. I plan to finish that book by the end of May. <crosses fingers>
#17 Read a book about the major world wars - Requested a book from the library. It came in, but I didn’t pick it up on time so they sent it back to the library it belonged to… Fail.
#25 Take a road trip with no advance planning - I’ve been thinking that I’ll try to convince Aaron to take off “up north” with just a map and a suitcase sometime this summer.
