Catching Up, Part I

Or, “What I did on my summer vacation”

So, I’ve had some stuff I’ve wanted to post for quite some time, but haven’t had time to blog for a while, as a result of searching for apartments, moving, and setting up the new household. Now I have gotten caught up, and will present the first of 3 posts showing a bunch of pictures I took this past summer. I suppose this is a little like making people look at a vacation slideshow, except that you’re free to leave this page at any time.

At the end of June/beginning of July, I went on a whirlwind road trip to attend my cousin’s wedding reception in Sault Sainte Marie (the wedding itself had occurred on an earlier date in Jamaica). The reception was to be held on Saturday evening. I say “whirlwind” because I drove to the Detroit area Friday, saw a friend for a few hours in the evening, stayed the night at my Mom’s, drove to the UP barely in time for the reception, left there after 11:30 and went to a motel room for the night, then drove all the way back to Massachusetts on Sunday.

It was a fun trip nonetheless, and I took some pictures, which are the reason for this post. So here we go:

I don’t have a lot of reception pix, but the one of general interest would be the cake(s). Instead of there being one big wedding cake, each table had its own castle-shaped sponge-cake:

The cakes came in two flavors: orange and lemon. The one on my table was orange. Instead of being frosted, they had raw sugar on and around them. Tasty!

The next morning, I rose early to prepare for the long drive home. I also wanted to make a quick touristy stop, for though I was born and raised in Michigan, this trip was the first time I had ever been to the UP. So, before leaving the Sault, I went to visit the Soo Locks.
Unfortunately, there were no boats passing through when I was there (at 8am), but I do like the pictures I got:

I also discovered that the viewing platform must double as a boat in the case of emergency evacuation:

On the way South, I stopped at a scenic lookout shortly before hitting the Mackinac Bridge. The view was nice:

but the interesting part was what I can only guess is the remnant of a lightning strike:

The trip was then pretty uneventful until I was most of the way through Ontario, and getting into the Niagara region. The traffic slowed to a crawl on the QEW, and I was forced to get off the freeway in unknown territory to try and find a gas station. I did find one, and then continued east to get back to the freeway further along. On the way, I stumbled across this: