Another Delayed Vacation Post

One theme from our vacation (besides me kicking butt at making a camp fire) was shortcuts that didn't turn out to be shorter.

Like the shortcut through the middle of Mackinac Island that added an extra mile on to our trek. (Although it was beautiful, half of it was uphill and my ass hurt the next day from riding the bike over all the bumps on the un-paved trail.

But? My least favorite "shortcut" we took on that vacation was the one on the way back to the campground from Mackinac. The one that had us lost at midnight with little to no gas.

Yeah, it was that good.

There was construction on the main freeway that lead back to the campground and we had noticed quite a few state cops there earlier, so we decided that instead of pissing off whoever was behind us by going the speed limit (Michigan drivers like to ride your ass if you're going anywhere under five miles over the speed limit) that we'd take a different route.

Well, we got off the freeway right at the beginning of the construction zone(which was about 10 miles long total) and we knew where we had to turn (or so we thought) so we were good. Right?

Wrong.

Along the way, I noticed a sign that said "Burt Lake State Park, Next Right". I pointed this out to Aaron who turned at the "Next Right". Well, this was not the state park where we were staying, but instead, it was on the other side of the lake. Wish they would have indicated that.

This was at about 11:15 pm and about 1/8 of a tank of gas left.

We went along this road, and started noticing that the moon was on the wrong side of the car. We were going north, not south or east like we should have been.

So we turned down another road. This is when we realized we were lost.

We realized we were really lost when the road we were on turned into a dirt road with only sporadic cabins along the side.

And the moon was still on the wrong side of the road.

We stopped and looked at the map which really helped since we had no idea where we were, but we could still see the lake so we knew we could find our way eventually.

Then we couldn't see the lake any more.

Finally, when the gas light came on, we came to a paved road and it was about midnight now. We found it on the map, and I started laughing hysterically. I told Aaron to turn right and it would lead us back to the freeway.

At exactly where the construction ended.

We had taken a "shortcut" that got us lost in the middle of nowhere for 45 minutes, and we still had about 20 minutes left until we got to the campground.

We found a gas station, filled up, made our way back to the campsite, and pledged never to take a "shortcut" again.