We just got back from a nice weekend in Holland including the Tulip Time 8K, which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  There was also a 5K and kid’s fun run.  The event had good facilities at Christ Memorial Church, including plenty of bathrooms, tons of bottled water, and standard food offerings (granola bars, bagels, etc.) pre and post-races.  Despite the large number of participants, we had no problem finding a spot to stretch out either before or after the race.

We had heavy rain en route to the starting point but fortunately it stopped just in time for the race, except for a few random sprinkles throughout to keep us cool.  The 8K course was pleasant, with plenty of time spent running amongst the tulip-lined streets of Holland.  There weren’t many spectators because of the wet weather, but I had my iPod so I didn’t mind.

While I really enjoyed this event, I do have a couple of minor nits to pick.  First, it was virtually impossible to hear any outdoor announcements.  A good number of the 5K runners didn’t even know their race had started!  Second, the 8K run shares the beginning of its route with the 5K runners, who are released first, and the end of its route with the kid’s run, which is released last.  So, we spent the first mile and a half dodging 5K walkers and the last kilometer dodging little kids.  I felt like I was in a video game!

Despite the dodging, I felt great throughout this race and finished the 8K in less than 50 minutes, which was my personal goal.  Full race results are available here.  This was also the longest organized race I’ve ever run.  I’ll be sure to pencil in the Tulip Time run for next year and I recommend you do too!

While it’s not technically in the Midwest, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a viable weekend destination for many midwesterners.  Having just come back from an absolutely fabulous Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge/Sevierville vacation, I have to throw in a plug for one of the few great National Parks within driving distance of my home.

We spent two of our four days hiking in the park and hit up some awesome trails.  A few park highlights were closed because of repaving while we were there (most notably Cades Cove Loop), but we had such a blast that we’ve already rebooked for Thanksgiving so we hope to see everything we missed then!

The first hike we tried was the popular Laurel Falls Trail which is 2.6 miles round trip.  The scenery is similar to that which can be seen on many other trails, but the waterfall at the end is worth the effort.  We hiked up and ran down, which was so awesome we repeated this pattern on all of our future hikes, at least to the extent the terrain permitted.  Be sure to do this one first thing, as it is a very popular hike for families and the trail was just beginning to get crowded as we reached the bottom around 9:00 a.m. 

We also spent some time on the Chestnut Top Trail, which we accessed via the park’s Townsend entrance.  Driving through this tranquil, picturesque area provided a refreshing change of pace from the chaos of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (which are also wonderful – don’t get me wrong!).  This trail was advertised as being covered with wildflowers in early spring, but we actually found it a bit ho hum in terms of scenery.  It totals almost ten miles round-trip, but we only did about four because the day was getting hot.

Finally, we spent the last morning of our trip enjoying an early morning hike on Alum Cave Trail.  I am SO glad we did, because this hike was definitely the scenic highlight.  We only intended to go to Inspiration Point and back but accidentally overshot it and ended up doing the 4.6 mile round trip hike to Alum Cave Bluffs, leaving us with less than fifteen minutes to shower, load our car, and check out of our cabin.  Oops, but worth it!  Here are just a few favorite photos from this beautiful trail.

We are Marriot Gold members and recently found ourselves with a free night to use.  After some debate, we settled on the Marriott at Eagle Crest Ypsilanti as our base for a food-filled weekend in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area.  Eagle Crest is a golf course, and the Marriott sits right in the center of it’s facilities.  As you can see, the golf course was still covered with snow when we visited – not that we would have golfed regardless.

This Marriott’s lobby has been recently “reimagined,” and it shows.  The space is bright and contemporary, with a lot of cozy little nooks, a bar with piano, and a bright, cheerful breakfast area (far right).  I was a little disappointed that we weren’t given a free continental breakfast, as we typically have been since hitting Silver and Gold status with Marriott.

Our room was also nice, and spotlessly clean.  The bed was comfy and had tons of pillows.  Unfortunately, we didn’t sleep very well.  I think this was because we never got the temperature quite right but I attribute that to operator error. 

The Ypsilanti Marriott has an excellent fitness facility, with multiple treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, free weights, and a great golf course view.  We had the place to ourselves for much of our 9:00 a.m. workout and loved it. 

This hotel is a bit out of the way for any one thing, but well-located for those who wish to be within ten or fifteen minutes of many things or for whom the golf course is the destination.  Service is good, the facilities are new and modern, and our overall experience is quite pleasant.  Overall, this hotel earns a 4.5 out of 5 from me and I would definitely return or recommend it.

After literally years of talking about it, the hubby and I finally got around to spending a late summer day at Southern Michigan’s Air Zoo.  Admission to the facility is free, which is a nice touch.  However, to ride any of the facility’s many rides will set you back between two and four dollars.  Simply to avoid messing with buying and counting individual ride tickets, we each purchased an unlimited ride wristband for around $14.00.  I would guess we probably about broke even which was fine with us.

The newer of Air Zoo’s two buildings is pictured above.  The facility opened at 11:00 a.m. on the day we visited and folks were literally lined up outside waiting to get in.  This is not to say it was overcrowded, which is fortunate because most of the attractions are simply not designed to handle large numbers of people.

The picture above shows just a small portion of the interior space – the place is huge!  This corner hosts a few of Air Zoo’s more family-friendly attractions.  Don’t be fooled by the tame appearance of Mongolian Balloon Race, though.  It spins quite fast and was just about enough to make me vomit!  We may have fared better on the adjacent airplane ride, but I’m not sure if we could have fit in the tiny ride vehicles.

Here are close-ups of a few of the planes housed in the first pavilion.  The coolest, by far, was the Lockheed SR-71B blackbird, which was unfortunately located in an area too dark for me to photograph.  While the planes are great to look at, the printed information next to each is fairly minimal and the mannequins are pretty cheesy.  There is a lot more Air Zoo could do with its artifact displays.

Here’s one of the rides we tried, a jet flight simulator.  This ride, like many others, left us feeling a little funny in the tummy thanks to plenty of tilting forward, backward, and up and down in an effort to shoot down an enemy plane.  There is a similar flight simulator for space travel which was not quite as high-tech. 

Air Zoo’s main pavilion also has a 4-D movie which seems to get rave reviews online.  Unfortunately, we never managed to get in to see it because we just couldn’t get the timing right.  One time we actually joined the queue, but the tiny theater filled up and the next showing was a half hour away. 

After we completed our tour of the first building, we followed a footpath through a large field which during our visit just happened to be the site of some sort of historical reenactment festival and military recruiting event.  We made our way through a virtual gauntlet of reenactors who asked us repeatedly to participate in the “2:00 amputation.”  No thanks!  We did pause for a moment to watch a large helicopter landing.  Planes come and go with surprising frequently at the Air Zoo and visitors can even purchase bi-plane rides for a reasonable rate. 

We then entered Air Zoo’s second building which seemed substantially older than the first.  It contained tons of additional planes, most with military heritage, as pictured above.  We saw one gentleman who was clearly a veteran who was permitted to cross the “don’t touch” line to have a picture taken by “his” plane.  That was nice. 

This building is also home to quite a bit of space-oriented “stuff.”  This includes a piece of moonrock (above, center) and models of various portions of a space shuttle (kitchen is above, right).  I actually thought these displays were some of the most interesting the Air Zoo had to offer but that may just have been because I think the space program is awesome.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this quease-inducing photograph of our last ride a day, or rather the hubby’s last ride of the day.  You couldn’t even get me on this thing!  After riding this, he turned to me and said, “you about ready to go?”  It was a good hour before he stopped complaining of nausea. 

We had a nice enough day at the Air Zoo but I think there is a lot of room for improvement.  If the emphasis is going to be on rides, there ought to be some that can accommodate large numbers of people.  If the emphasis is going to be on educational displays, these need to be beefed up.  Right now the place is a bit of a hodge podge and unless you are airplane crazy or love motion simulators, I don’t recommend going too far out of your way to visit this facility.

We’re only a month out from the next great excuse for a three day weekend, so start making those plans!  If you want to squeeze in one last weekend in the great outdoors before cold weather looms, consider a few days down south.

Brown County State Park is Indiana’s largest and, in my opinion, most average state park.  This may sound like an insult but it really isn’t.  The park has everything one needs in a state park – twelve miles of hiking trails, horse paths, tons of greenery, and on-site lodging.  There is plenty to keep a family busy here for a day or a long weekend.  These amenities combined with the park’s large size make it a good pick for a crazy holiday weekend.  That said, the park just doesn’t have anything truly distinct, like Clifty Falls’ waterfalls, Pokagan’s scenic lake and toboggan run, or Turkey Run’s river straddling trails.  In other words, go to Browne County State Park enjoy nature but don’t expect to be shocked and awed by anything in particular.

Here’s the view from one of the park’s dozen or so hiking trails.  Most are of moderate difficulty and only one trail is classified as “rugged.”

The Abe Martin Lodge, of which you can read my full review here.  We didn’t love our stay at the hotel, but we did love the Little Gem restaurant which you can take advantage of even if you aren’t a hotel guest.  Don’t miss the macaroni and cheese! 

If you do decide to stay at the lodge, you can take advantage of its lobby facilities and do…puzzles!  For some reason we always end up doing this when we stay in state park lodges.  We were quite proud of this one even though the pieces were larger than normal.

If you get stir crazy from all the nature, be sure to take a trip into downtown Nashville.  It’s a little touristy, but fun.  I personally thought the famous Nashville House (fried biscuits) was overpriced and overrated, but I loved the downtown candy store and several other knick-knack shops.  Tourists can also take a trolley ride around to see the town’s highlights.

We heard tons of positive feedback about this free, family-oriented zoo before our trip to St. Louis and bumped it to the top of our must-do list as a result.  The weather was perfect, and it was overall a nice day at the zoo.  A couple of tips for your visit:

1.  Arrive early, arrive early, arrive early!  Whether due to the price (free) or the day (Fourth of July holiday weekend), the zoo became a madhouse by around 11:00 a.m.  Seriously, this was one of the most crazy busy zoos I have ever visited.

2.  Strategically plan your visit.  While arriving early is necessary, some of the animals aren’t let out into their enclosures until an hour after zoo opening!  Start with the inside exhibits that are clearly open to avoid back-tracking like we did.

3.  Don’t miss the penguins!  The indoor open-air penguin exhibit is definitely the coolest of its type I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of penguins!

4.  Food and gift store service is slow, slow, slow.  It took us about fifteen minutes just to get a drink, and don’t even get me started on the debacle I encountered while trying to buy a magnet!  Plan to eat lunch early, late, or elsewhere.

As a loyal Marriott rewards club member with a particular penchant for Renaissance properties, I have been looking for an excuse to stay at the Renaissance Indianapolis North since it opened about a year or so.  I got my chance last week when visiting the city for a meeting. 

Overall, we had just an okay stay.  The facility was nice but the service was really crappy from check-in to check-out.  Our room was large and clean but oddly arranged so we actually had very little floor space.  We also had an exceptionally terrible breakfast buffet experience that set us back over $30.00. 

Here’s the exterior view.  Fairly ho-hum, but I still had high hopes for what was inside.

The lobby is decorated in the bright, modern style typically used in Renaissance hotels, but the atrium ceiling is lower than usual so the hotel lacks that “grand” feel.

The Renaissance is full of little nooks and crannies like this where people can sit and play cards or have a drink.  Unfortunately, the lobby was occupied by a large group reception for the whole evening on the night of our stay.

The pool isn’t the most exciting in the world, but at least it was clean during our visit. 

Here’s the gym, which is small but pretty fabulous.  The wall not pictured was lined with brand spanking new treadmills.  Marriot hotels almost always have this very nice brand of exercise equipment, but I can’t remember what it’s called.

This is the entrance to the hotel restaurant, Grille 39.  I had high hopes for this restaurant because we’ve had some really fabulous meals at other Renaissance resorts.  In fact, breakfast here is when our stay really began to go downhill. 

The buffet line was pretty barren by the time we visited at 9:30 a.m., but I managed to fill my plate as shown above.  While the food looks pretty good, most of it was not.  The bacon was oddly seasoned and cold.  The pastries were dry and flavorless.  My strawberries had mold, which you can actually see if you look close enough.  The only really yummy dish in the bunch was the cheesy potato casserole pictured at 3 o’ clock on my plate.

Here’s a photo of the hubby’s plate, with more dry pastries and some bland pancakes. 

The grossest part of the meal, by far, was the “made-to-order” eggs.  I asked for scrambled eggs with cheese.  Twenty minutes later, I finally received this half-cooked mess that looked like the beginnings of an omelet.  I couldn’t eat more than a bite or two.  YUCK!  At the end of the terrible meal, we couldn’t even manage to flag down our server so a manager finally ended up bringing us the check. 

Overall, breakfast was a very disappointing end to a somewhat disappointing stay.  The Renaissance Indianapolis North simply failed to “wow” us, so I will likely be heading back downtown on my next trip to Indy.