Figure I’d start this off with a little recap of our weekend. We ran up
to Tawas for a 5K and a little fun in the sun. After getting all our
camping gear out and in the car, we were on our way… until we had to
turn around and get Susan’s socks for the race. It was getting late into the
evening, and we decided to hit up A&W for a little grub. They were serving
outdoors to the cars pulled up, but we went inside only to find out we
didn’t really order with a server. Each table has a phone on it and once you
were ready, you placed your order through the phone. That was pretty neat!
The food was good, we got some burgers and a couple of huge root beer
floats (at least I thought it was good, I didn’t throw, my onion rings on
the ground 😉 ). Being well fed, we headed up north on a two-lane road,
which seemed to take a really long time. We managed to find the KoA
Camground even though Google maps told us to turn to the right, when it
was actually to the left.

The campground was really nice, the bathrooms were probably the nicest
campground bathrooms I’d ever seen! We managed to get our tent set up
without too much trouble (seemed to take awhile to find just the “right”
spot to set it up and the grey poles are definitely shorter than the red
ones 🙂 ). After a long day at work, driving, camp site setting up, we
were pretty tired, only problem was it was pretty warm and super humid
(not ideal sleep conditions the day before a race!) With my cellphone set
as an alarm clock we tried to sleep through that nasty humidity, I managed
only a couple hours of sleep. When the phone/alarm clock went off, we
started getting ready for the race by the bay. Although the campground had
a pancake breakfast going on, we were already in Tawas, fueled and ready.
A work buddy of mine was checking in at the last minute as I picked up our
shirts and numbers. A quick warm up back to the car and race time was
getting close.

The only thing nice I can say about the weather was it didn’t rain, but
man was it horrible to race in. It was still very humid and trying to run
(walk) through it was not an easy task. Susan thought she did good in the
walk, so we stayed for the awards ceremony (she finished 8th overall,
three away from a prize…) My time was pretty bad, but at least I crossed
the finish line still standing! After the awards were handed out, we went
over to the beach for a little kite flying. I somehow managed to get the
big kite up this weekend! In the process I nearly lost my index finger
(ok, maybe just a little cut, but it still hurt!) A sudden wind change
brought it back down nearly hitting the kids playing underneath the kites
(that’s right, a whole big beach to play on, go right where a kite could
hit you…) I pulled my little one out and it went up without much effort
(even after crashing into the water, whoops…) The kids weren’t moving
and by this time we were getting kind of hungry, so we retreated from the
beach. We hit up a pizzeria for lunch.

After lunch, we checked out the dog show that was happening in the
little park across the street (they were doing sprints and not the
obstacle course, so that got boring pretty quickly.) There was a kite shop
down by the beach, we stepped in and hadn’t realized it was the tiniest
shop you’d ever been in. It was getting pretty close to nap-time, so we
went back to the campsite for a little rest. Noticing a mini-golf course
alongside the road, we thought it’d be fun to try. We didn’t realize it
was the #5 mini-golf course in the state rated by AAA (it wasn’t all that
impressive, but it was pretty fun). Susan managed to get two hole-in-ones,
but I somehow ended up a couple strokes ahead in the end (and almost a
hole-in-one on the last hole for a free game, this close > < ). Our
bellies were rumbling after that intense round of golf and we headed over
to a locally owned restaurant. The food was really good there and we had
some entertainment on the streets.

Hitting up the ice cream shoppe we listened to a band play a couple
songs (…Susan didn’t even want to dance with me). It was getting dark
and the bands weren’t all that great, so we went back to the campsite to
sit around the camp fire (we actually weren’t tired enough to not have a
camp fire this trip!) After demonstrating my boyscout skills, I had what
you could call a fire that didn’t want to show its flames very much. I
think the wood might have been damp, as there was a lot of smoke and not a
lot of flames. After going through nearly a bundle of wood, it was smore
time! The smores were awesome and the temperature had cooled off to be
quite comfortable (well in a snug sleeping bag that is 😉 )
On the way back home, I had wanted to get a sweatshirt, but the shops
were closed… we did get to see some classic cars as a show was
happening… (wonder if the streets are ever open). We did pretty good on
packing, only managed to forget some pillowcases (which K-Mart had some on
sale) and all and all it was a pretty awesome weekend.