The last time we went we felt we were just a little bit too far from the show. Michigan City sets theirs off from the pier and spectators line the expansive beach for literally miles. We think we were maybe a half mile out that time.
This year Mr. Right was determined to get closer. Last week he started asking me if I'd talked to the Beths about going and when I told him they weren't, he was disappointed. I said "We could just take Anna and Noah". He said, "no". "How about Kayla and Emerson" (the two children that live across the street but visit pretty frequently to see the fish). He said, "No, lets just go by ourselves".
Now that was a novel approach. It just didn't seem right. All that todo - getting ready and getting down there just for us? Hmmmm Anyway, that's what we determined to do. But it turned out that getting down there was even more of a todo than we expected. We arrived at 7:04 and the main entrance to the park was blocked by the police. We went in the back way and every parking lot was blocked. That would seem normal if they were full - or even near full but most were not two thirds full. There were parking places everywhere but no one was allowed to enter. I approached an officer of the law and asked if they were going to open the parking lots because there were at least 500 parking places in there. He said no because there were 10,000 people that wanted to park. There's some logic. I wanted to tweet Michigan City Fireworks parking - Big Failboat. But I didn't know how to so I didn't.
We parked in a weedy lot and paid $5. We didn't mind that but it was a half hour walk to the beach where we wanted to be. Then we were approached by Jake, who's starting college this Fall. He offered to take us there for $3. Mr. Right didn't think twice before he said "SOLD!".
So we got to the beach and there was a wonderful boardwalk so we didn't even have to walk through sand. We set up 'camp' close to the boardwalk and waited for the fireworks. At about 9:08 they started.
To begin with they were really good fireworks and we were definitely groovin' on them. Then came the grand finale and grand it was. Here are some examples, but they just don't do it justice. I took eighty pictures in the last one minute and every one had the potential to be spectacular. Unfortunately I was so excited that some of them were too blurry to keep but lots were good enough.
The whole show was fantastic really and we had no regrets about going - yet. The half hour walk back to the car wasn't bad at all especially since we were accompanied by hoards of other people walking miles to their cars because of the Police Dept Failboat.There is one tiny little detail that could still put a damper on this memorable evening.
As we were backing into our parking place in this weedy parking lot, a terrible noise starting coming from under the car. We thought we'd picked up a milk carton or something ; and it wasn't bad going home - in fact most of the time we couldn't even hear it.
But when we backed into the driveway, it reared it's noisy head again. Upon inspection, Mr. Right saw that it's part of the car. A shroud of some kind must have been torn down by those very stout, tough weeds.
So now I'll call Honda and later today we'll probably know in what way our evening really was memorable.
