I just returned from a ten day visit to my old hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. I grew up there, but left when I was 18 looking for adventure. I moved to Seattle and spent the rest of my adult life living various places around the West. I have only been back a handful of times since.
My niece Sarah, whom I visited in Barcelona last spring, has just moved back to Grand Rapids with Oscar, her Spanish sweetheart, and I traveled east again to attend their wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and reception. 
Oscar's sister and mother came over from Spain. 
My brother and his wife came from New York state. 
My sister's other son was there with his wife.
My sister was a lovely Mother-of-the-bride and my other niece Claire was a bridesmaid.
It was fun to get together with the new, ever-extending family.Tom joined me for the wedding weekend, allowing me to drag him around to all my old haunts from my childhood - my childhood home, my old schools, Reeds Lake where we used to sail and ice skate.
Then he returned to work while I spent the week driving all over Michigan to places I hadn't seen in many years.While Tom was still there, we went to Saugatuck Dunes to reconnect with Lake Michigan and show Tom one of my favorite things from my youth.
I always loved the Big Lake, as we called it. People who have never been to the Great Lakes cannot really imagine how big and wonderful they are. They are like seas or oceans in that you cannot see the other side and you can sail them for days without seeing shore if you want. But the water is fresh and clear without salt. There are fish and aquatic plants, but they are mostly different ones from those in the oceans. There are dunes and surf and beaches. I loved seeing it again.
After Tom left, I took Oscar's mother and sister on a sight-seeing trip to Traverse City, which is a pretty little resort town on the northwest coast of the Lower Penninsula of Michigan. We stayed a a nice condo on East Grand Traverse Bay. Here is the view from the condo at sunrise. 
We drove around the Leelenau Penninsula and shopped in quaint little towns, visited the lighthouse,
and marveled at the beauty of the bright red and orange colors of the leaves of the trees. Those hardwood forests of Michigan are glorious in the fall. 
And we went to Sleeping Bear Dunes so they could get an idea of the beauty of Lake Michigan.
After returning the Spaniards to Grand Rapids, I drove to the southeast part of the state to visit my friends Evangeline and Candy in Ann Arbor where Evangeline is finishing her Ph.D. in Classics (Greek and Latin) and where I attended University briefly in 1972. We toured around the University and went out to an apple orchard for fresh cider.
On the way back to Grand Rapids, I stopped by Lansing, the capital of the state, to visit an old friend from high school, Genese. We had a great time in Lansing's old town (I never knew Lansing had an Old Town!) visiting galleries, eating lunch, and laughing about our memories of our high school highjinks as well as filling each other in on our current lives.
On my last day in Grand Rapids, I went out for drinks with the other two members of our girl gang of four in high school - Diane and Jody. More revisiting high school memories and filling in current events. Diane had probably the most important insight of the whole nostalgia-fest when she pointed out that we four girls never had the catty, backstabbing nastiness that teenage girls are famous for. We were all just good friends, intent on having fun, meeting boys and trying to figure out life together. We were a true support system, and gave each other a lot of the strength and confidence that served us well later in life. It was wonderful to see them - and Michigan - again.
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