I-96 Speedway
3823 Portland Road- Lake Odessa, MI 48849
- (616) 642-0555
- Website
- Concession Menu
If you knew me 13 years ago, you’d have a hard time believing I was the same person. The Summer of ’00 I started working for a small manufacturing company near my home town for the summer. One of the three employees happened to be a friend of mine and my dad worked with the boss’ husband…so I sort of had an in.
The workshop was in the garage of one of the owners just outside of Kankakee, IL. I actually had a lot of fun the two summers I worked there. The people were great and I made enough cash to keep gas in my car and to run around with my friends on Friday and Saturday nights.
The interesting thing that happened while I worked there was that I got in to racing. My dad had always been a race fan, but it never really rubbed off on me. All of the people I worked around would gather at the local short track on Friday nights and cheer on their friends. Eventually, they talked me in to joining them….and I got hooked…hooked bad.
For the next few summers, I was at different short tracks in the area two, three, four times a week. All of the money I was making was going to gas and pit passes. If you read this blog, you know how obsessed I get about things…and yup, there was an informational website that I created and updated on a regular basis almost as obsessively as I do this one.
The great thing about me getting in to racing is it was something my dad and I could bond over. We took trips all over the Midwest to as far away as the Lake of the Ozarks, Eastern Iowa, Southern Indiana, Western Kentucky, etc. to follow one series in particular. The summer event known as the UMP SummerNationals. Read more…
The Lodge Diner
2901 Grand River AvenueAnother Saturday off! This is what the rest of the world must feel like. Once again, I had plans which is why I had the weekend off in the first place.
J was invited to an awards gala at Sound Board inside the Motor City Casino in Detroit. We had the option of driving over ourselves, but we decided to go with a bigger group from work and take a party bus. We could have a few more drinks that way and could sleep on the way home.
We were really pushing getting to the event on time due to a couple of extra stops. There was a cocktail reception two hours prior to the event at 7:00. We walked in to the casino at 6:50. After finding a bathroom, J went to get food while I went to the bar to pay $7.50 for a Bud Light.
After the gala, the rest of the group wanted to stay and gamble. J and I are not gamblers. We figured we could play slots for a while, but not for the 2 1/2 hours the others wanted to stay. I didn’t eat at all at the gala and J only had a little bit of what was left out by the time we got there. Read more…
HamBone Cafe
1896 Blue Star HighwayOur last day of our Saugatuck vacation started pretty early…at least for us. We had to be out of our cabin by 10:00 AM, so at 9:00, J woke me up and we loaded up the cars and said bye-bye (or da-da as L says) to our cabin by about 9:40.
For a while, we had talked about going in to Grand Rapids and spending the day, but we were all pretty tired from the week and just wanted to get back to familiar surroundings so we decided to head home.
As we were getting in to the cars, I asked if we could get some breakfast first. J said she was hungry and since (of course) there was a place I wanted to eat just down the road, we were going to breakfast.
I first heard of HamBone Cafe on Terry’s Blog a couple of months ago. The small restaurant is south of M-89 on Blue Star Highway outside of Fennville. I actually thought it was a little closer to M-89 than it actually was, but it’s a pretty short drive from I-196.
We pulled up around 10:00 and found a pretty full parking lot. When we got in the door, we found HamBone Cafe to be the meeting spot for area farmers. The place was full of older men in John Deere hats and more came in joining the conversation as the morning wore on. Read more…
Peachwave Frozen Yogurt
6 W. 8th StreetThis Froyo craze is just crazy. It’s simply amazing to me how many places are popping up and how many people are eating this stuff up. I remember when frozen yogurt wasn’t something you could find in every downtown. The only game in town was TCBY…now, I can’t tell you the last time I found one of those places (although their website says there is one in Grand Rapids and one in Muskegon)….but crazy Froyo places are everywhere.
After a couple drinks at Our Brewing Company in downtown Holland, J and I decided to walk around for a while. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot open in downtown Holland on a Sunday night, but just a nice stroll up and down 8th Street sounded like a good idea.
We stopped in to Kilwin’s to pick up some fudge, but that was for later. J said she thought there was a frozen yogurt place somewhere nearby and that’s what she was really looking for.
Peachwave Frozen Yogurt is one of two Froyo places in downtown Holland…the other Orange Leaf, is right around the corner. Since we came to Peachwave first, that’s where we decided to stop.
Holland’s Peachwave is one of 72 locations nationwide, but the only one in Michigan. It’s on 8th Street just to the west of Central Avenue. While there wasn’t much open in Holland on this night, the place was really packed. Read more…
Our Brewing Company
76 E. 8th StreetJ and I were hoping we’d get one night while we were on vacation to go out by ourselves. No baby. L has so much fun with NaNa and Gwapa so we really didn’t think we’d have to worry about sneaking away for an hour or two.
We talked about going to Saugatuck Brewing on Saturday night, but ultimately decided to wait. We’re really not Friday/Saturday night bar people anymore. Instead, all five of us went and had a fantastic lupper (lunch/supper…you know, that meal at about 3:36/4:00) at Saugatuck on Sunday.
After we left the brewery, J asked her parents if she and I could take a trip in to Holland to hit up another brewery. Her parents were alright with it, so they dropped us off at our car and we headed north.
We spent this rare few hours together at Our Brewing Company on 8th Street in downtown Holland. If you know were New Holland is, just go a few doors down and you’ll find Our.
J and I decided to hit this place up alone because they don’t actually serve food, so we didn’t know if it was a place we should take L. We would have been fine. There were actually several kids her age or younger hanging out with their parents and no one seemed to mind. Read more…
Dairy Dayz
6473 Washington AvenueIs there a better way to end a Saturday night in the summer than with ice cream? After grilling dinner at our cabin, we decided to go for a little walk. Lucky for us, there was a little ice cream shop within walking distance.
Dairy Dayz is on Washington Avenue (Blue Star Highway) just to the north of 65th Street. It’s a little walk up shop that shares a building with an art gallery. The ice cream joint takes up the north side of the building and there’s a pretty large parking for those who weren’t as lucky to be as close as we were.
L has never had an ice cream cone before and one of the goals of this vacation was to get her her very own ice cream cone. We ordered her the Itty Bitty Vanilla Soft Serve cone. It took her a second to figure out what it was exactly, but once she realized it was ice cream, we wouldn’t have been able to take that cone out of her hands if we wanted to.
J’s mom also got a vanilla soft serve cone. She go the small which at most place would be well past a large. It was a towering twist of soft serve ice cream. She says she could have probably have shared with L and they both would have had enough. Read more…
Critter Barn
9275 Adams Street- Zeeland, MI 49464
- (616) 748-1110
- Website
Our big plans for the day were something J and I have been looking forward to for a while. I’ve documented on here several times how much L likes animals or as she calls them, “doggies.” At some point this winter, J came across the Facebook Page for an educational farm in Ottawa County. It’s a pretty good drive from Kalamazoo, so we never really made much of an effort to go to it, but since we were staying in the area, it became our go-to activity on our first day in Saugatuck.
The Critter Barn is in Zeeland Township just a few miles east of I-196 on Adams Street. It’s sort of easy to miss from the street. It looks like it’s just a house, but behind that house, is a pretty large farmyard with a lot….no seriously, A LOT of animals.
There’s a long driveway that leads to a pretty small parking lot behind the main barn. Today was a pretty popular day at the Critter Barn. The parking lot was pretty full when we got there and they started parking us in no parking spaces just to fit everyone in.
After we unpacked L, we found a sign that said “Entrance” so we followed it. We came to a little counter and J told the lady working that we had four adults and a one year old. We were then told there was no admission charge. They accepted donations, but they don’t charge admission. I was reaching for my wallet, but J’s mom was quicker and stuck about what we had expected to pay for admission in to the box. Read more…
Holland Farmers Market
150 W. 8th Street- Holland, MI 49423
- (616) 355-1130
- Website
Our first full day of vacation started like most Saturday’s in the summer do for J and I. We made a trip to the Farmers Market. Only instead of our usual haunt, we found a big one along the lake shore to check out.
The Holland Farmers Market is right in downtown Holland on 8th Street between Pine and Maple Avenue. As we drove down 8th Street, I think everyone in the car was shocked at just how big the Holland market is. We could see huge crowds a block away and had no idea what we were getting ourselves in to.
Parking looked like it might be an issue at first as we were looking for a spot on 8th Street, but when we didn’t find anything there, we noticed cars coming out of a large parking lot in front of the Civic Center. We could see from the street a few cars pulling out right near the front and we whipped in that lot to take one of the open spots.
When I said a few sentences earlier that the market runs between two streets, I wasn’t kidding…in fact, there’s some spillover into a parking area on the north side of 8th Street. There are a lot of vendors…A LOT and the great thing is, because the aisle is actually a street, there’s a lot of room to walk and push a stroller. We’re usually anti-stroller at markets because there’s so many people packed into small spaces, but at this market, we didn’t have the Boba carrier and there was plenty of room to push a sroller
We weren’t really looking for anything specific. We just sort went with the intention of getting out in the fresh summer air and seeing what we could find. Read more…
Lakeshore Convenience
155 Blue Star HighwayWork always seems to get in the way of fun. Am I right, people? Ah, hell, it ain’t so bad, but on the first night of vacation, my family did have a blast while I was at work.
As I was sitting there watching the clock count down until I got a few days off to relax, J sent me a text message that they had picked up pizza and there would be some left for me when I got home. It’s like she read my mind or something. I was already looking for a pizza place that would be open when I got to the cabin.
Our cabin came with a book with menus for a number of restaurants in the area. My family picked the plainest looking menu and decided to order from a convenience store…sounds just like something I would do.
They chose to order pizza from the Lakeshore Convenience store on Blue Star Highway in Douglas. The small shop sits near the corner with Center Street just to the west of the downtown business district. The store has all the things you would expect a convenience store in a tourist town to have…but they also have really good pizza. Read more…
Mug Shots Coffeehouse
404 Water StreetI hate the word “Staycation.” I don’t know who actually coined the phrase, but seriously, someone kick them in the shins for me.
That being said, J, L and I took a staycation this last weekend. Because of work schedules, this will probably be the closest we actually get to a real vacation this year. J’s parents rented a cabin at Kingfisher Cove in Saugatuck this past week and invited us to stay with them. J was fortunate enough to have the entire week off. I only had Saturday and Sunday off then I would be traveling back and forth to work each day from Saugatuck so I’d still have the mornings. J’s step-dad had Friday-Monday off, so he also had to bail early.
The plan was for me to go to work on Friday then just drive straight over from Grand Rapids, but J got off work early, so we decided to head towards the cabin when she got home. I was hungry and wanted to take care of that problem first and there just happened to be a place on the way that has been on my short list for a while.
Mug Shots Coffeehouse is in downtown Allegan on Water Street near just south of Cutler Street. It’s a great old row building with a large public parking lot next to it.
Mug Shots has one of those great coffeehouse feels. The floors are dark wood. Most of the tables are the higher pub type tables. You know what I’m talking about. Just a great, cozy feel. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 