The Grad School Diaries: The Grand Traverse

Walking around the streets of Traverse City, it’s hard to believe that you aren’t in a resort town on the coast of an ocean, not a lake. Visually, the place looks a lot like La Jolla; the community feel reminds me a lot of Manhattan Beach, or Laguna Nigel, and the bite in the air would make anyone who’s ever been there think of San Francisco. If the climate here was tropical I would say the place was a ringer for Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii – one of the only other north-facing beaches I’ve ever seen, and another city that feels more like a commercial center than some prettified tourist trap. But we’re 2,400 miles plus from the Pacific and six time zones from Hawaii as of this morning…

It’s cold, rainy and windy this morning, especially for late spring, but this far north these conditions aren’t unusual for May, and no one seems especially put out by it. Downtown is only a few streets wide, but several miles long, as it follows the curve at the bottom of the Bay, more or less like every other beach town I’ve ever visited. We’re driving more than walking, because of the weather, but even that seems oddly familiar in some way. Part of it I can blame on Google, I suppose; we’ve toured these streets using Street View, and apart from the fact that the camera truck was here in the dry season (whenever that might be) the place looks just the way it did on the screen. But some of it is just the memory of other places and other times; I don’t actually know where the parking lots are, or where the streets start running one way only. The year is 2010, not 2001 or 1991, and I’m a long way from anything I’ve ever known…

During our first full day in the area we had breakfast at the Pie Company – the flagship store of the café where we have most of our breakfasts – spent some time exploring the town, and then headed up along the Leelanau Peninsula to visit some of the many wineries, cheese makers, candy makers, restaurants and artists’ colonies located in the small towns along both the Lake and Bayside coasts. It’s everything you’d expect from Michigan in the springtime – green and lush and wet, with arbors and groves of apple and cherry trees, vineyards, forests, rocky coasts, mirror-surfaced lakes, and winding country roads. It’s hard to imagine that this place is part of the same state as East Lansing, let alone Flint or Detroit; it’s wild and beautiful and remote, with huge stretches where the only obvious change since the pioneer days is the paved road…

Most of the vacations I took before 2001 (and after becoming an adult) were trips I went on by myself, since I spent most of the years between 1982 and 2001 alone. For the most part my immediate family is just as happy not to have to travel with me as I am to avoid them, and while several of my cousins are a lot of fun to travel with, differences in age, resource levels, interests and maturity levels generally prevent us from going on vacation together. I’ve made four different trips to Hawaii by myself, for example; I’ve also voyaged to Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado, Yosemite National Park, New York and Virginia with no companion, and recorded mixed results. Walking through the High Sierras alone has a John Muir vibe to it that’s actually kind of neat, whereas being on a beautiful, romantic tropical island by yourself is inherently depressing. You’d think that after almost nine years I’d be used to travelling with someone who actually enjoys going places with me, but somehow that never gets old…

Tonight we’re going to try one of the local microbrewery restaurants – I can’t drink anymore, but my wife still can, and the food at this place is supposed to be excellent too. Tomorrow we’ll visit one of the many local bakeries and probably do some shopping before we hit the road back to East Lansing. I suspect we’ll be back sometime soon; there are still a lot of things in the area that we’d like to do, and several other locations in this part of Michigan that would also be fun to visit. But even if we never pass this way again, I know I’ll always remember Traverse City beside the Bay on a rainy night…