Road trips have been a favorite thing since way back when. In college, my buddy and I would just get in the car and drive until we had to be back for something important. There were nights we’d end up hours from Grand Rapids, MI in Indiana or Northern Michigan. One of these nights, we had the brilliant(ly stupid) idea of driving around Lake Michigan. It was a random March night and we though it would be fun to see if we could make it around the lake in one shot. By this point in time, we had already had many nights of driving to the Mackinac Bridge and back, down every road in our county and surrounding ones, so we were well adjusted to staying up all night blowing money on gas for no reason. We were fueled by coffee, stupidity, and a lack of direction. These trips, these night drives, would eventually lead to our our spring break road trips, and many other adventures along the way.
Here are a few shots of us breezing through Chicago. Notice the excellent photography skills and attention to photo framing; obviously documenting the trip was less important to me back then.
Morning was starting to show and this photo happened in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Flash + snow.
We started before midnight, and pushed through to the next day. We were getting pretty tired by Northern Wisconsin, and I think we stopped for Hardee’s somewhere before entering back into Michigan. We were good at fighting the exhaustion, it was almost a game, and we’d get second and third winds which led to louder music and rolling the windows down allowing the icy air to blast through the car. This was freedom.
Without the flash, the morning light begins to illuminate the snow.
Temperatures were around zero and the morning sun was beginning to show. You know that feeling of false warmth you get from the sun on a cold day, we didn’t feel that because that’s how cold it was. We had a stockpile of caffeinated products and the need to get back home so the sunrise was just further encouragement.
We stopped several times to take photos of the sun over Lake Michigan as well as at a little rest stop where a thermometer nailed to a tree read just above zero, which we believed was a lie. I might mention, at this point, that we were doing all of this in a 1991 Dodge Caravan that my buddy inherited from his mom when she got a cooler car back in the early 2000s. This van was a beast, all wheel drive, and made it through an unplowed turnout, with a little help from one of us pushing.
We made it back to our respective dwellings safely and probably passed out, I cant’ be sure because we could have also went to class. This may have been the first time we drove around Lake Michigan, but there were more brilliant(ly stupid) adventures to come.
