A Visit Up North

I have never made it a secret I am from the UP of Michigan and I do manage to make it up there every now and then. This week is that time I can visit, I am the only person who goes north in the winter. I arrived on Tuesday after much delay and airport change O’Hare instead of Milwaukee. My brother is awesome and picked me up. I got to see my nieces (one is 2 months old, so baby snuggles were had). We then drove to the UP and surprised my mom at bingo with the aid of some friends. I concocted a whole story I was flying to Williamsburg for training. She was very surprised (there is video of this). I played one game of bingo for my grandma and we went to one of the local bars.

The great thing about the local bars is you can order from the local pizza joint and they will deliver to the bar. I sat, drank my gin and tonic and ate a half of Mueller’s pizza. It was true heaven.

The next morning we decided to go to Rosy’s Diner for a late breakfast (it was brunch but no one serves brunch in my hometown, a very foreign concept to me). Any who, we went to Rosy’s. Rosy’s is a dive, like a greasy spoon diner. One person (Rosy) cooking, taking orders, bringing food to tables, essentially everything. Rosy is crass, a spitfire of a lady, think a female of a military drill Sargent. It was nothing for her to start a string of profanity. We sat, she took our orders and I watched in amazement how she berated her customers and each one ate it up. We get our meal and my hash browns were burnt (honestly I would have sent them back if I had been home) and my brother’s eggs were missing. We (my brother, his fiancé and I) were fine with it, my mom speaks up “Rosy you forgot his eggs.” My brother was telling my mom to shut up because he didn’t want to wear the eggs. Rosy goes into a self-deprecating rant about how she was the idiot who forgot the eggs. I watched in amazement at this whole scene. My mom said, “do you want me to say something about the hash browns?”

“No, mom my hash browns were wonderful and very tasty,” I replied as I covered my hash browns with more ketchup.

My brother and his fiancé were laughing at my response. All I could think was if she says something I am going to be wearing this whole plate of hash browns and how is this one of the best diners in Michigan? I mean it was a basic diner, no way the best diner food I have had not even close. The service was interesting, I mean Rosy is the equivalent of a honey badger and people go in and eat it up. It now makes complete sense why we never really went there when I was a kid. We always went to Elmer’s, sadly Elmer’s closed, there is a void for a family friendly breakfast place in my hometown town.

After brunch we stop by my grandma’s house and we tell her where we went. She said, “oh was she swearing behind the counter?”

“Yep, not much has changed,” and we recounted the whole experience for her.

My grandma, laughed, “that is Rosy.”

We also went to the Family Inn later on that day. Fantastic, the soup was delicious and I was able to get a “fresh” salad (not brown) in Michigan in January, a huge feat.

My brother and his fiancé did take a little adventure to the local candy shop, one of my brother’s best friends coffee shop (Express Coffee made one of the best Chai Lattes I have ever had!) and to the local brewery Upper Hand. It was really nice and I got my patch for my backpack!

I am also consuming a ton of water, I always forget how dry Michigan is. Yesterday, I drank 128oz of water and still felt parched. Outside of running to the bathroom (a lot) I thought it would do more, my skin is so dry. I brought a tiny thing of lotion and it is almost gone. I might need to Amazon some so I can get through the week.

I am sure more updates will come because it is still dark at 7:30am here and I don’t want to wake anyone up.