Forgive me if I ramble lovingly of Michigan for awhile. This will be my strongest embrace before I let her go. Unless you're from Michigan, you wouldn't understand just how beautiful she is.
Let me advise you to try something silly. Set the palm of your left hand just into a pan of cool water. (If you're from Michigan, just relax.) What you've just created is a fairly accurate topographical map (well, the thumb's not flat enough).
Your map is of a very magical place (poof, it's raining). In the winter, your fingers offer a snowy wonderland with good to excellent skiing (marginal at best). In the Spring, the base of your thumb could be the best shopping you'll ever know (compared to Indiana).
Following into Summer, the lower left has beefcake beaches and sandy bikinis to check out (behind mirrored glasses). And the tip of your pinky in Autumn opens into a golden harvest day that's as sweet as a bowl of cherries (and a pie, a fruit salad, a glaze, a flambeaux and two pounds of dried). Trust me, it's a nice state (it's rad as hell!).
We'll begin the journey just off the tip of your middle finger, on beautiful Mackinac Island (tasty party place. Working on Mackitraz certifies any zipperhead as a total alkie. You go crazy from ragin' every night and getting crushed out of your gourd. Money spentus - brain cells wasted).
The next stop will cascade you down the tops of your ring finger and pinky to one of the top 10-rated places to live in the U.S. - Traverse City.
(The windsurfing, volleyball, boating and nightlife are choice. Play tough during the day - full throttle at night. Most chicks are hip and groovy, but there are a bucketfull of dirty ones, too.
The Cherry Festival is gnarly, but that town just isn't built for so many people. The traffic gets pretty bogus, and Fudgies aren't too sweet to deal with on an ass-hot day.)
Falling further down your pinky, the next Michigan gem is at the knuckle. Here, Silver Lake is an amazing combination of beauty and ruggedness. (Stellar four-wheelin'! Wicked dunes and sand pits, killer bogs and the most kick-ass off-road vehicles on the planet! Totally monster grins from doin' thick wheelies uphill at 50 mph. It's a no-fail good time.
The drawback - hick heaven. You get there and you're like, "What's the jig? Inbreed much?" You'll dig it once you get past the billies.)
On to the highlight of the trip. The greastest place in Michigan is none other than Grand Haven. (Rad! The buffest beach in the Midwest. There's nothing like soakin' up rays on the hot sand with totally sweet Scarabs racing offshore. Except maybe startin' off at Tip-a-few, bouncin' over to Laguna to get out and wiggle, and then watching your friends honk on the sidewalk during Coast Guard Festival. That's fun!
Grand Haven has its fair share of tools and zip-perheads, and sometimes you can get beat so bad at volleyball, you'll go completely sketch; but overall, it's Ping!)
A half-inch in from Grand Haven, you should have a good vein running up your hand. That's U.S. 131. It's a great highway that will take you right through Grand Rapids - an all-American city. (The only city that's more conservative is Salt Lake. Blue eyes and best buys, we're the Grand Rapids Dutch - thank you very much. It's sort of a hose, but the cool... are very cool. Purple East Plus on Division St. is the WalMart of head shops. A very noble selection of paraphernalia. Then there's Reptile House - a bar a few blocks down from Purple East. This place is Random! My favorite game to play at Reptile is "Guess
its sexual preference." Woah! Bail now or get hit on by the wrong gender (whatever that my be).)
And then the last place to see is in the middle of your hand, below your knuckles. It's East Lansing. You may not know the city, but the school is called Michigan State University. (Bash central! Circus tents with 10,000 people and hundreds of kegs that go for days. The parties are swell, but the girls... golden. 60,000 students, and you'd swear 59,000 of them are gorgeous females with a big ol' wad of sass on their shoe. This place is the bomb!)
Of course, I left about 26,000 good places out of this tour. Those are mine; but you can visit them. All you have to do is look at your hand. More than likely, you're looking at something good.