Vacation Day 1: Cheboygan State Park

Today was the first official, non-traveling day of my vacation. My mom and I woke up, ate breakfast, and drove (ha ha to the non-traveling) up north.  I love going north in Michigan because there are all these little roadside stands that sell cherries and well, mostly cherries. When my sister is with us, she only lets me stop at one stand, but my mom lets me stop at each one.

Anyway, after taking our time with the drive, we checked into our hotel and then meandered over to Cheboygan State Park. A Michigan state "recreation passport" is required for this park, but we drove my car instead of my mom's (which already has one - you can get it on your license plate when you renew at the DMV or what Michigan calls the Secretary of State), so we had to pay $9 for a day pass.  Anyway, we went on a hike (the blue path to the green path so we could see the lighthouse ruins) and saw all of the following.

Dunes! There are dunes! And trees! I always get more excited about the trees in Michigan than I really should. But it's a FOREST. With actual trees.

And if there are dunes, there is water! This is Lake Huron, which looks exactly like Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. So, there you go. We walked on this beach for miles according to my Fitbit and while there were some seriously insane biting flies, we slathered on some bug spray and called it good.  It was pretty cool today, in the high 70s, and mostly overcast, so this was about perfect for the two of us to beachcomb.

We saw this fish skeleton and we debated whether it was disgusting or beautiful and settled on both.  I took about five hundred photos of it. I'll spare you the repetition.

Clearly this driftwood is a whale. If you do not see a whale, you should probably not come on vacation with us.

We also saw the lighthouse ruins (kind of cool, but dark), found two perfect seashells, and shared our bug spray with fellow beach travelers.

Then after a mediocre dinner and a stop at Dairy Queen (cookie dough Blizzard!!!), we headed back to the hotel for a rousing game of Super Big Boggle. Don't act like you don't party with your mom like this.