Oh, Island Life

It’s 10:00 am and I’ve (the person who went on a getaway to sleep in!) has been up and out since 7:00 am, and now I’m going to take a short nap. But first some impressions of island life as I know you have been waiting for them. #1. Everyone drives slower, from the 90ty year olds to the workers. Someone from Manhattan or a gotta get there quick lifestyle would have a coronary down here. #2 Tacky seems to be the norm. Yes there are some nice places, but crappy cheap junk seems to draw folks like a magnet.

When I was a kid I used to go up to Mackinaw Island Michigan for a bit in the summer. To get there we had to take a very fast ferry across the straits’ of Mackinaw because there were no cars on the island. People walked, rode a bike, rode a horse or took a horse drawn carriage, known as a taxi to get anywhere around the island. Equipment and supplies were transported after they arrived by boat by drays which were, flat beds drawn by big horses such asClydesdale's (think the Budweiser horses only not so clean).

I tell you all that, not as a rep for the tourist board, but to show you how very lovely the island is, because everything is the same today as it was in 1957. My point is, given all the adventures I could have had, I spent a majority of my time in the gift shops trying on moccasins and stroking the plastic horses. So I can understand the lure of the island gift shop, it’s just they have become overwhelmingly ugly and smelly. My shops on Mackinaw smelled like leather (for those of you that haven’t been to Mackinaw know there is also a pervasive smell of horse shit, but you get used to it) the ones down here have a cloying scent of eau d’plastic with a top note of sticky vanilla. Really, it’s enough to make you turn around and leave.

#3 People still sun bathe. I was at the public beach around nine and the folks were already coming in with their coolers and chairs. I knew they were the diehards because even from as far away as I was their skin looked tough…a pretty color, but up close, I bet it looked like a parched desert. But those are the women and men that keep usestheticians and dermatologists, not to mention the pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies, hospitals, insurance companies and of course the resorts, in business.

I have never seen or heard the mating of seagulls, but it is not a peaceful thing. I wish I'd had a movie camera, because the whole time it was going on the male was making such a racket and flapping his wings so much you'd think she'd get fed up and dump him right off her back or he'd fall off first! The lord works in mysterious ways.

So that’s it for my observations so far - now I nap.