Roadtrip 2021
“My best friend lives in Novi. She teaches there. And I grew up not too far from Detroit. Moved to Copper Harbor about 10 years ago. This is home now.”
After 10 years, Julia admits she is finally ready to call herself a Yooper.
“I was born in Japan. Moved to the US when I was 4. Spent 20 years here and then moved back to Japan for a few years. And now I am back. I will be your cruise guide tonight. Welcome aboard!”
Sam, one of the many cool cruise guides entertaining and educating 100s of visitors from all around the world who board his Seattle harbor cruise everyday, has a warm tone when he welcomes the travelers, i.e. his customers.
“Listen, I am not going to get angry with you. I love my job too much to let unruly behavior like yours ruin my day. I will once again ask you to follow the rules and not be a jerk. That’s all.”
Edgar, a 20 something park ranger, guarding a visitor center inside the Yellowstone National Park, keeps his smile on, while he encounters a rather difficult visitor who refuses to wait in line just because the visitor center wants to limit the number of people who could stay indoors, in order to maintain some sense of social distancing during these COVID times.
Meeting people like Julia, Edgar, Sam, and many others during my 22 day road trip across this amazing country made me realize one thing — How insignificant are those things that I consider significant in my daily life.
After being on the road for more than 3 weeks, I ‘had to want’ for the road trip to end because there were ‘significant’ things to do after we got back home but I then I really didn’t want to stop traveling.
I don’t know for a fact, but there is something about the momentum of travel that makes me want to just keep moving and to never stop. Perhaps that’s why I am trying to elongate my travel through these posts — by writing about some of the experiences.
The nearly 8000 mile road trip was more educative than I imagined. It gave me many moments to pause and appreciate the opportunity I have had to travel like this. And it gave me many moments to pause and appreciate the lives of those I met — their life stories and the choices they have made.
Julia and the Upper Peninsula
That Julia would move from the thumb (ask any Michigander what the thumb is) to the Upper Peninsula is a big deal. Because the U.P., as it’s called, is indeed a world apart. It’s relatively remote (in all possible ways) at a time when most everything feels overly connected.
The denizens of this part of the state even have a separate name: Yooper. Over here in the U.P, within deep snow and dense forests, are burrowed in together, the languages, foods, and traditions of Cornish and Finnish copper miners, French Canadians and Native Americans.
The peninsula offers enough to do for visitors throughout the year. And it also has one elusive National Park. In fact, the biggest miss for me personally during this road trip was this National Park — The Isle Royale National Park is one of the least visited national parks in the country, if not THE least visited. It’s on its own island and is accessible only through ferries or seaplanes. We had planned to spend enough time to be in the Copper Harbor area and yet, we couldn’t find ferries on the dates we could have traveled to the park.
We met Julia inside the Copper Harbor visitor center. She was managing the place alone and we were the only guests inside on a bright Thursday afternoon. There was enough time to talk about the peninsula and more. Her past life and her current life, her family, and her professional choices. It’s not just the woods but it’s the absolute slow pace of the peninsula that attracted her to this part of the state. She said she may never consider moving back as long she could work there.
This was not my first time visiting the U.P. But this was the longest time I had spent during a single visit. As I absorbed the culture and history of the U.P. and understood how distinct it is from the rest of the state, one thing was clear — That the U.P. truly puts insular on peninsular.
What connects Edgar, Sam, and Julia is that they all provide service to people like me — travelers.
Doing what they do perhaps unconsciously allows them to search for moments that leave them feeling both high with an adrenaline rush and with some unpredictable but unforgettable experiences through travelers they serve.
As a traveler, that’s what I was seeking too. That’s what I still seek, even when the travel is long over. The ability and opportunity to search for those moments.
Tonight, as I sit down on an old porch chair, and write this last story in this travel series, the sun goes down and I am watching the long gray skies over Michigan and sense all that raw land that rolls into one magnificent and huge bulge over to the West Coast — all the way to the Pacific Northwest, and all that road passing, all that rivers meandering, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Montana I know by now someone has caught a fish and is happy because they let him fly-fish there, in Oregon I know by now another pizza has been sold and another bicyclist has completed a milestone, and in Washington I know by now someone is summiting a peak, in the U.P. I know by now trees have changed colors, tonight the stars will be out, gleaming on the prairies and buttes, before night darkens all the lakes and rivers, cups the peaks, and folds the final shore in, until the sun gives a tight hug and releases them all in the morning, and I think of them all not knowing what will happen to them till I visit them next, and then I think of Nisar, Brenda, Adam, Ray, Mike, Sam, Edgar, and Julie, I even think of those people I never talked to but briefly saw, their faces telling stories that I wish I had the time to hear..
but..
But I mostly think of this beautiful country called the United States of America.
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This is the 5th and the final post in my 2021 travel series.
You may read my earlier posts from this series here:
1) The Space Needle
2) Badlands
3) Big Sky Country
4) Pizza for the Soul
