Janet’s Webpage

For weeks I have been looking at light weight tents, durable boots, and recipes for campfire cooking.
This camping fever started when I was using Pauli’s office. Pauli… tall, slim, balding, and the only guy at the plant who can run a mile without feeling overwhelmed. He was on night shift during the outage and I took the liberty of using his private office when I got kicked out of the WIN team (real estate is always limited for maintenance departments). Paul has maps of routes taped all over his office walls, one of which is the long map of the Appalachian Trail.
The Appalachian Trail map on Paul’s office wall is about 3 feet tall, detailing the 2,000+ miles and 14 states trail as well as Paul’s dream of one day through-hiking the whole thing. While I was in Paul’s office, I think I stared at the map more often than I did work.
I am mesmerized by Bill Bryson’s narrative of his adventures on the Appalachian Trail, and I’ve been wanting to try out the trail myself ever since reading his book. This is typical Janet, by the way. It’s like the time I went to Paris after reading Sadaris’ essays. This is also very unrealistic since I welt under sun, rain, high wind, high temperature, low temperature, high humidity, or any combination of natural environment.
Still, I feel no shame in broadcasting my dream to anyone who would listen. This just goes to show how nice people are since no one has laughed out loud in my face yet. Neal, one of the WIN team guys, even gave me a couple of Michigan state park maps for me to try out. One is Warren Dunes and the other is Grand Mere.
Grand Mere really is the biggest secret of the southwest Michiganders. It’s free, it’s dog friendly, and if you spend a few minutes to walk pass the dunes, you are rewarded with a mile of beach front all to yourself.

Took some pictures of the park, but it was a cloudy day and the park really is prettier than the photos.