Michigan, August 2022

I’m from Toledo, Ohio and we have a saying: Michigan and Ohio fought a war over Toledo and Michigan won. It’s nicely self-deprecating like most things in my hometown, but it points to a key characteristic of Toledo–it’s more closely aligned with Michigan than Ohio. Major League Baseball means Detroit Tigers, we use Detroit Metro Airport for most flights in and out, and our weather has more in common with our northern neighbor than central and southern Ohio’s big cities. So I expected a trip to Michigan to be a trip to my backyard. I did not expect to be surprised by the mitten, and saw this trip as a chance to visit home and maybe discover the Upper Peninsula. But as I started moving out of the Detroit suburbs and figuring out how to manage my time, I realized I was not really visiting a state, I was visiting the Great Lakes. One of my friends reminded me that four out of five of them choose Michigan, and that became the focus of the trip–not really a land mass like other states, but a set of unique coasts.