Back to Michigan

Barely a mile from our house, we stopped for doughnuts to take with us to western Michigan. I waited in the car, face-to-face with a couple of newspaper boxes. An above-the-fold headline of USA Today last Friday, May 23, 2008: Gas Costs Cut Into Vacation Travel.

Just down the street, at the gas station we patronize fairly often, the cheapest gallon was some cents more than $4, about a full dollar more than the last time we drove to western Michigan, only two months ago. Should we take this as proof of the peak oil theory, or an oil bubble the size of Texas? I'll leave that for the months and years ahead to sort out.

In the meantime, I grit my teeth, and pay. The high cost isn't enough, yet, to forgo a trip that offered glimpses of the grassy hills and wooded slopes of the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness, the winding dirt roads of the Manistee National Forest, or all the faint stars of the Little Dipper. The birdsong around here is nice, but it really fills the tent early in the morning in a place miles from any town. In the nearest town, a ship that plies Lake Michigan announced its presence loudly as it docked, and we had the chance that same day to hear and see a game of vintage base ball and note its subtle differences from ordinary baseball, even the sandlot variety we can hear and see played from our back yard.

I watched the gas gauge a little more closely than before, but only a little. Without burning some gas, we couldn't have repeatedly driven through the little town of Free Soil, Mich., or past the rural cemetery down the road; reached a lakeshore beach just like one in Chicago but without the people; or seen the lighthouse off Ludington. It was a good way to spend four days and three nights. At $8/gallon, maybe not. But for now, hang the cost of gas.