When in Michigan, You Must Climb a Lighthouse!

I got one last roadschooling field trip with my babies. 

One last adventure incorporated into two kids' homeschool plans. 

One last time earning two Girl Scout badges (Lighthouses of Michigan) and two Girl Scout fun patches (Discover Michigan) by studying for what we'd be sightseeing.

Essentially, one last trotting out of the key word "homeschool" to justify whisking my girls away with me to make magical memories while we let Matt pretend like he has to work, thereby justifying staying home and not doing annoying things like climbing the tallest lighthouse on the Great Lakes that can be climbed by the public.

Here is the New Presque Isle Lighthouse:

It is so tall, and yet so climbable!

Alas for its storied climbability, for Syd, the tallest of us, was looking down to watch her feet on those terrifyingly narrow and see-through stairs, and did not notice that the ceiling essentially came down towards those stairs at the top, meaning you had to duck quite low to make it out onto the landing.

She did not duck, and absolutely slammed the top of her head into the ceiling. I'm feeling VERY lucky that she didn't lose consciousness and tumble backwards down those stairs, but man, she hit her head hard. She was hurting even more the next day, the poor kid, like she'd been in a car crash or something. It seriously sucked.

For those of us short enough to not knock ourselves into a concussion at the top of the steps, the view was marvelous and well worth the 113-foot climb:

Here's the lantern room. You can see the original Fresnel lens that used to be visible for over 25 miles away on display inside the light keeper's house:

The light keeper's house also holds some historic ship artifacts:

There's supposed to be a nearby shipwreck that's often visible from shore, so we drove down that little dirt road that you can see in my vista shot, above, and headed out for a hike on what the children soon deemed Spider Beach, Part One:

The shore was so rocky and amazing, paved in a billion interesting rocks and fossils. And underneath every single rock was a spider. Spiders sensed us coming and would skitter between rocks in our path. When we paused to look around, spiders scuttled along on their merry ways around us, emerging from under one rock and scooting under another. 

Pick up a rock, find a spider. Look around, see spiders. Dare to take a beach nap, and you'd surely wake up with your ears full of spiders.

But those spiders must do great maintenance work--look how shallow and clear the water is!

We did not spy the shipwreck, which I was super bummed about and the kids pretty much had to lock arms with me and march me back to the car to keep me from walking just five more spider-lengths to see if maybe the shipwreck was around just one last spider-boulder, but I guess that's what future trips to Michigan will be for. 

Instead, we tiptoed between the spiders back to the car, then drove to the OLD Presque Isle Lighthouse!

This one is only 30 feet tall, and yet the view is even more marvelous:

The Old Presque Lighthouse even has its Fresnel lens in place!

Someone in particular, however, could not be convinced of the marvels of the top walkway, not even after a good pilfering through my first aid kit for Ibuprofen. She preferred the view from the other end of the lighthouse:

Probably just as well for my darling who does not love heights, because this staircase was somehow even steeper than the last:

The beach here was even lovelier, even shallower and more interestingly rocky, though still quite chock-full of spiders:

The kids both refused to put their noses up against a spider's, the better to identify it in our nature guidebook, and therefore they both failed the Practical Arachnology component of their Discover Michigan fun patches, but they did find other lovely natural wonders to look at:

Gneiss rock!

I even got Syd's picture with the definitely haunted statue of Patrick Garrity, Sr., a former light keeper who's now lighthouse famous, so we'll have a lot of fun when he comes crawling out of the photo one night and, I don't know, shines bright lights into our sleeping faces?

Anyway, that's a problem for another time. Now, on to Mackinac Island!

College Tour: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

 Never mind that Will isn't actually interested in applying to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: we were in Michigan, near Ann Arbor, and I wanted to start our season of college tours!

Fun fact: I didn't visit a single college back when I was in high school applying to them. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, applied to colleges pretty much at random armed only with my own very miniscule amount of common sense, and wandered off to the college, sight unseen, that was both out of state and offered me the most scholarship money.

I really fell upwards in that scenario!

I might, then, be living a tiny bit vicariously through Will's college search process. Will has no interest in attending a big public university, but *I* was interested in seeing one, we were practically next door to it a few weekends ago, and a dry run at college tours, and a look at a college, even if it's one that your kid doesn't think she wants to attend, never hurts.

It looks like University of Michigan is offering in-person guided tours now, but it wasn't when we went, so Will and I pulled some interesting sites off of their self-guided tour resources to walk around and see. We'd both have LOVED to go inside every museum and library, as well, but alas that they were all closed, so I guess we had more of a sightseeing expedition than a college tour.

Wouldn't you know it, the coolest thing we saw wasn't even on the U of M campus, but on our way to it:

A delivery robot!

Remember when Will researched delivery robots as part of our Girl Scout Robotics badge lessons? And now we've seen one in the wild! I could not have been more excited if I had come across a literal celebrity out and about on the streets of Ann Arbor. 

Here's The Cube:

Here's the Law Quad:

Here's... a thing:

Here's some Virginia creeper, a vine that Matt is SO allergic to. It's probably good HE didn't go to school here!

Here's the brand-new University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, which Will and I would have given our right arms to have gone inside of:

Here's the Peony Garden, which was hopping!

Here's a willow:

Here's the Wave Field:

And here are some swings!

Will and I have been speaking a lot about her... close-mindedness, let's say, when it comes to college options. Her snap judgments. Her tendency, for instance, to dismiss a place like Yale outright simply because Yale had the audacity to send her a brochure through the mail. Honest to god, I have NO IDEA how she's going to choose a college, or, to be frank, how I'm going to let her go away from me to whatever college she does choose. But now, at least, we've got one unofficial, practice college tour under our belts!