Tales From the Road: Clare Welcome Center

First off, my apologies for the delay in posting. Upon traveling Michigan's northwest, I quickly realized that a wireless internet connection is hard to come by, especially when you are on the move, trying to fit as much as possible into one day. Therefore, I went back to my reporter roots, jotting down notes in my notebook to blog when I got back.


So with the exposition aside, here is the first of multiple entries from my trip to the northwest, which included stops in Cadillac, Traverse City, Glen Arbor, Leland, Charlevoix and Cross Village. Enjoy!

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It was a great arrangement: I wanted to work on my thesis, Mom wanted a vacation. So after some planning and pooling our resources, we loaded up the Chevy Tracker and made our way to Michigan's northwest. I made it a personal goal of mine to not use my GPS, Tom, (yes, he has a name and is programmed with a British accent) and to instead, navigate the way to Cadillac with only a map. 

At the Clare Welcome Center. As anybody that has ever traveled 

with me can attest to, I am a big fan of signage. / Samantha Franz

We made a stop at the Michigan Welcome Center in Clare and like kids in a candy store, we made a beeline for the Michigan guidebook section with rows and rows of glossy covers staring back at us, advertising everywhere from Macomb County to Grand Rapids to a bear ranch in the U.P. Probably the last thing I needed was more maps and guidebooks, but here I was, stocking up and getting my hands full pretty quickly. It was then that a very sweet old man, probably pushing 90, with a Pure Michigan polo asked if we needed a bag. He wisely came back with two. 

"Are you two teachers?" he asked us, probably assuming so by the way we were grabbing literature left and right. I smiled and briefly explained Project Michigan to him and he asked where I was headed first. After replying the northwest, he scurried off and promptly returned with a small stack of guidebooks. "These are about the wine country," he said as he dropped them in my open bag, like a child accepting a treat on Halloween. 

"Oh, you need this one, too!" he said, reaching over and adding a pamphlet about the Sleeping Bear Dunes. "I've been reading all winter," he added proudly. 

The man then pointed us in the direction of yet another rack of information we might find interesting, which we of course grabbed a few more for the road. 

I really wanted to get this name before I left, but that's when I spotted him across the room, helping an older couple with the same beaming enthusiasm as he had with us. With a smile, we walked out, bulging bags in tow. There wasn't much else to do at the Welcome Center, so after posing with my boy Smokey the Bear, we set off to Cadillac. 

Man, did Smokey get buff over the years or what?/Samantha Franz

When we arrived at the cottage (Thanks so much for letting us stay, John and Helen!), I laid out all of my Michigan literature, which was everything I had before, plus the two bags from today. It was really cool to see everything that Michigan has so much to offer, no matter what region you are in. It made me even more excited to commence my travels. :)

How's that for Pure Michigan?/Samantha Franz