Picking Strawberries and Riding on the Hay Ride.
More Strawberries. Yummy!
Saturday - Woke up at 3:45 AM to make it to the airport by 4:30 AM (and this after 2 VERY sleepless nights!). Arrived in Michigan after a short change of airplanes in St. Louis at 3:30 PM. We sent Rebecca on a different airline with my parents, and they landed in Indiana, so she was not with us until we arrived at the reunion. Aaron and Anson picked up the rental car while I picked up the baggage and hauled it to the curb with Katie. As we drove to the cabin, Aaron noticed a sign for a cider mill. He lived in Michigan one summer when he was going to BYU - he had an internship at Dow Chemical in Midland. He remembered the yummy apple cider that they sell all over the place in Michigan, so we stopped. It ended up being the CUTEST little farm ever. The strawberries and cherries were in season, so they let us take baskets and go pick to our hearts content. We even rode on a hay wagon with a tractor pulling it to get to the fields. The farm also had a lot of other types of fruit, but they were not in season at the time. They had a little play area that we decided we did not have time for, but Anson would have loved it. We bought some cider, the cherries, and strawberries, and were on our way again. But not for long! Aaron remembered a small town called Frankenmuth that was settled by Bavarians. They have the largest Christmas store ever called Bronners. We stopped and found a star tree topper for our Christmas tree. They also had a recreation of the church where Silent Night was first sung. We stopped at the Bavarian Inn for dinner which did not go very well due to everyone's lack of sleep. We were finally on our way again. We were due to arrive at the cabin at 11:16 PM according to the GPS, but it decided to take us some crazy way to the cabin. We ended up on a one lane muddy dirt road in the middle of the forest trying to find the cabin. It really was quite hillarious. We ended up turning around and just followed the mapquest directions that I had fortunately printed off. We arrived around 11:45 PM and went to bed as quickly as we could.
Sunday - We woke up WAY too early, and made it to church at 10 AM. We enjoyed visiting with everyone and taking a nap in the afternoon. We had a family meeting and planned for the next reunion in Utah in 2010 - to take place in conjunction with the Markham Family Reunion in Spanish Fork on July 24. I also learned that I need to do family history work and write in a journal.
