You Get The Picture: Looking forward to exploring and relaxing

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June 7, 2012

You Get The Picture: Looking forward to exploring and relaxing

By Magen McCrarey CNHI The Sentinel-Echo Thu Jun 07, 2012, 03:22 PM EDT

LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. —

Planning a family vacation can be a tedious task, conflicting opinions and a handful of sighs followed by an of onslaught of “I don’t cares.”

Idealistically the prime destination is the kind where sand gets stuck between your toes and dolphins majestically jump into the morning light from shallow depths. Second to idealistic is the vacation that involves a big city with lots of delicious saturated fat to consume. Although, neither of those ended up being my family’s prime choice.

Probably as a result of my deep sighed, “I don’t care, it doesn’t matter to me.”

We have decided upon vacationing to the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan. Don’t let the negative association of a dirty Detroit sway your opinion of the beautiful state though. Michigan is home to some of the nation’s largest wetlands and has more freshwater coastline than any other state in the nation. Not to mention the U.P. contains 29 percent of the land area of the entire state but carries just three percent of the total population.In plain terms, I won’t be running into many other rowdy vacationers only the occasional “Yooper” who might teach me a thing or two about their Finnish ancestry.

My plans of resting on the coastline and taking peaceful walks in the woods will one-up any other beach-goers crowded dreams. Not to mention I’ll be spending some time with family that are products of my great grandparent’s Polish decent. They joke around about the “pollock” slur, but there’s no joke that they know how to have fun and where to find the best authentic foods around.

I’ll soon be trading in the summer heat for a cool lake breeze. We will be on the Western side of the U.P. highlighted by a lakeshore beside a mountain of sand dunes and miles of hiking trails through old growth forests guiding me to tucked away waterfalls.I suppose I doubted my family’s idea of re-defining the summer vacation a bit too early on, but I’ve changed my mind. Driving up to the U.P. doesn’t sound all that much of a hassle when it means having a true vacation of exploration and relaxation.

mmccrarey@sentinel-echo.com

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