Relaxin’ ‘Sconie Style
This past weekend Ted and I took a much-needed short vacation up to Wisconsin to visit family, celebrate Ted’s mom’s birthday, celebrate our own 2 yr. wedding anniversary a little a month early, and attend the Packers home opener game. As always, our time in Door County, Green Bay, and the Milwaukee area was incredibly relaxing and blissful. It’s always so nice to get up there every year in mid-September, just as fall is getting ready to settle in, the leaves are starting to chance colors, and the weather is cool and breezy. It’s become a tradition that we both very much look forward to and appreciate!
Thursday evening on our way up to Ludington, Michigan for the night, we had the pleasure of driving past Blue Lake, where I spent six weeks this summer living in a rustic cabin in the woods and teaching theatre & dance at one of the nation’s top fine arts camps. It was so nice just to drive by camp again and to remember all the great times I had there with really great people only three short weeks ago. I truly cannot believe that is has only been less than a month since all the tap dancing, Shakespearing, choreographing, boonies-living, and beach bonfiring. It literally seems like it was years ago! So driving past camp really made my night wonderful and brought back some very fond memories. We stayed the night at a hotel (read: KING BED…undoubtedly the best part about staying in a hotel!) in Ludington and awoke early the next morning to the embark upon the S.S. Badger, a historical coal-powered car ferry and mini-cruise vessel, across Lake Michigan – from Ludington to Manitowac.
We loaded Ted’s truck and trailer into the bowels of the ferry – our truck and trailer shared the trip with three farming tractors, two semis, several motorcycles, a handful of other cars, and a truck with crates full of freshly picked apples from a farm! – and then we climbed up to the passenger part of the vessel for our four-hour journey across the lake.
We snacked on popcorn, apples, and hot chocolate, played a few video games in the arcade, hunkered down in the lounge for a heck of a lot of Bingo (a surprisingly fun activity…are we getting old?), learned a slew of new corny jokes (you’ve been warned!), and hung out on the deck, cozy in our deck chairs, just watching the water and world go by, and enjoying the wind and rain. Unfortunately, it was too cold and overcast to lay out on the deck, basking on the reclining chairs in the sun, but that sure didn’t put a damper on our time onboard. Taking a short cruise on this history-laden ferry was a totally awesome and unique experience, and a great way to save several hours driving around the lake when we could be relaxing on a boat on the lake instead. I may or may not have invaded the children’s playroom.
When we docked in Manitowac we drove to Green Bay to spend a few quality days with Ted’s parents. We snoozed on the couch for a luxurious midday siesta and they took us out for dinner that evening.
Saturday we took the entire day to venture to Door County in the convertible (our wedding car) on our annual pilgrimage in celebration of our two-year anniversary. It was a beautiful day. I’ll have a whole separate post on that later! Trips to Door County always deserve their own post.
Sunday we went to church bright and early, came home for a nice sit-down, home-made breakfast of Ted’s mom’s classic egg bake, and we were joined by Ted’s sister Kate, her husband Tim, and our nephew and niece Caleb and Alexis, who had driven up from Milwaukee for the day. Kate, Tim, Ted, and I took the kids (and, uh, ourselves) to Green Bay’s classic historic Bay Beach Amusement Park, a sweet little old-timey fun park that Kate and Tim used to go to as children, located right on the shores of Green Bay. All the rides are still $0.25, except for the main ride we came to experience…The Zippin’ Pippin’, Elvis Presley’s favorite roller coaster! At only a buck a ride, it’s still a total steal! It was a great coaster!! Ted, Kate and I went on it, and it was practically empty except for us, so we got the front car. It was an absolute blast! We laughed and hollered the whole ride and got great views of the bay from the top before we went whizzing down and around. I can’t wait to go on it again the next time we visit Green Bay! It’s a just plain fun coaster. We also rode the train around the park, Ted and Kate took the kids on the kiddie helicopter ride, and all 6 of us crawled into potato sacks for a multi-lane race down a huge slide. Such a wonderful morning!
Since Ted’s parents live only about a mile from Lambeau Field, the Green Bay Packer’s home stadium, Kate, Tim, Ted and I got decked out in all our Packers gear, took our traditional family photos, and walked to Lambeau for the home opener game against the San Francisco 49ers. Though the Packers lost the game (many thanks to the terrible referees…even the 49ers fans in attendance attributed their win to the referees poor performance), the game itself was a heck of a lot of fun! This is the first and only Packers game I have ever been to that they lost, but now that that loss is over and done with, we have it out of the way and can continue to win from now on! As I said, the game was still a ton of fun. We had Boys II Men singing the national anthem, a fantastic military fly over, a lot of great plays and exciting moments, and gorgeous weather. We always love attending the home opener with Kate and Tim. Another wonderful tradition we look forward to every year :)
(seeing double?)
After the game we walked home to have ice cream turtle cake to celebrate Ted’s mom’s birthday, and then we crashed pretty early.
Monday we slept in, spent a lazy morning unpacking the trailer and repacking our bags, went to Chili John’s for lunch with Ted’s mom and Fr. Bob, ran a few errands, visited the Packer Pro Shop to pick me up some Packers gear and office supplies for my desk at work (I’m surrounded by a Lion’s fan and a Viking’s fan…it was necessary), and then drove to Milwaukee where we picked up the best cheeseburgers and fries in the whole entire world at Kopp’s for dinner. We drove another half hour to Mukwonago where Kate, Tim and kids live. We all piled on the sofa to devour our cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, and Dairy Queen blizzards while we watched some Monday night football and old episodes of Who’s Line Is It Anyway. I crashed early, but it was a fun night nonetheless.
As always, a totally fantastic weekend!
