Burrowing wolf spiders, a coughing dog, and wet horses

As one might guess from the title our weekend has been far from boring. We were invited to spend the weekend in Traverse City with some friends that were there for an international horse show. Our original plan was to leave Friday night, but since Ulrik had to work over the weekend (yup, he is at Macdonalds all summer) we decided to leave Saturday morning. This turned out to be a good thing workwise too, as I have a rat that needed some extra TLC (and peanutbutter gel diet) to recover from surgery. So after a quick stop at the University we headed North early ' ish Saturday. Luca's friend Alessio was waiting for us as we got up there and we almost instantly went out to see if we could catch some pokemons. We had hoped to get some of the water ones, but most of the beaches were private, with that kind of retired people that rake the sand multiple times a day so they can immediately spot, if an intruder dared to set foot on their property! But seriously - get a life people!

Instead we went swimming in the bay. It was awesome and I am glad I did not learn about the burrowing wolf spiders, that live in the sand by the beach and come out and bite people, until afterwards. Then I might not have enjoyed the beach quite as much.........

We went for dinner in downtown Traverse City with a stop at the big Cherry Republic Store. They had 16 different kinds of cherry icecream! Does it get any better than that?

When we got back Luca and Alessio did a little glow stick performance and then it was time to find a bed. Unfortunately I shared the room not only with Luca but also with Buddy, the very old dog with extensive coughing. Guess who was woken up about every 45 minutes by a dog coughs? :-(

Sunday we went to the Great Lakes  Equestrian Festival, an international horse show running for 7 weeks, where Soleil was participating. It was pouring down most of the day, so it was a cold and wet experience for the two legged as well as the four legged audience. But a stop for hot lunch at Big Boy helped quite a bit, and now we are eating up the miles to be back in Ann Arbor before it is too late. Hopefully the apartment (and Ulrik) are still standing ;-)