Wingstop (Oshtemo Township)
5021 W. Main StreetI’ve mentioned how expense figure skating is, right? A couple times?
I’ve been trying to pick up some extra work so we’re not stretched quite as thin. I’ve found something I can do a couple of times a month on weekends and that gives us a little extra padding when it comes time to pay for competitions and ice time.
I had to work last Saturday evening. It’s only a few hours but pays pretty well for what I do.
Saturday was kind of a lazy day. We were out pretty late Friday night and everyone slept in on Saturday. J had to run some errands before I went to work in the early evening and she brought home Chick-Fil-A for lunch. When I got done for the night around 10:00, I was pretty hungry and craving wings.
Lucky for me, there’s a couple of Wingstops in the Kalamazoo area now.
I chose the Oshtemo Township Wingstop location. It’s on the corner of West Main and Drake in the West Century Center. The small storefront is on the southside of the parking lot in the space that used to be Let’s Swirl Froyo.
Read more…Mi Pi Pizzaria
1070 Arcadia LoopI finally get a day where I stick to Kalamazoo. It’s been a while that I haven’t left town for work.
I had to run over to FedEx Office near Western Michigan University to pick up some stuff for J. I decided to run over on my lunch break while I had a little bit of free time.
I was hungry…I mean, it was lunch time…so I planned on getting lunch while I was out.
There’s not a lot of quick things to pick up between WMU and downtown but there are a couple of new places in the new Student Center to grab lunch.
The Student Center is on Arcadia Loop right at the roundabout that ends Michigan Avenue by Sangren Hall.
Read more…Bigfoot Burrito
205 W. Monroe StreetI had a pretty slow day at work and didn’t really have an assignment, so I decided to go for a drive. If it was a typical sunny summer afternoon, that would have been a great idea.
It’s not summer and it’s not typical. We’re in the middle of a deep freeze and the roads are crap.
I decided to take a drive to South Haven anyway.
It was a quick trip to South Haven…well, quick once I got there. I just wanted to go get some pictures of the lake and the frozen lighthouse. I had been seeing it on social media and wanted to see it for myself.
It was after lunch time by the time I started home. I could have picked up something in South Haven but there’s a place I was going to pass in Bangor that I’ve been wanting to try.
Bigfoot Burrito is right in downtown Bangor. It’s on Monroe Street/M-43 right on the corner with Railroad Street. The building has been a lot of different restaurants over the years. The last time I was in the building it was Smokin’ D’s The Smokehouse. I feel like there was a restaurant in between but I never stopped there and can’t for the life of me think of what it could have been.
Read more…Continental Pastries & Deli
928 Columbia Avenue Well…it’s been a while but I’m finally writing a blog about a place in Southwest Michigan again.
I was in Battle Creek earlier this week and had some time to kill. I was kind of driving around aimlessly looking for some place to eat….wondering if there was some place that I keep driving by or keep missing.
Nothing was coming to mind until I started driving down Columbia Avenue heading towards the airport. I remembered there’s a pastry shop that’s kind of hard to spot when you’re driving and not looking off to the side.
Continental Pastries & Deli is on Columbia Avenue near Woodrow Avenue just outside of the Lakeview Neighborhood on Battle Creek’s west side. The building is kind of long, narrow building. There is signage and parking on the Columbia Street side but there’s a lot more parking and a lot more building once you get in to the parking lot to the west.
Read more…Raise the Roost (George Ade Travel Plaza)
5100 Plaza Avenue We knew the drive home from Chicago wasn’t going to be an easy one. The sun was shining as we left Evanston and stayed that way pretty much all the way to Indiana. I’ve driven I-94 in snow storms many, many times while at work so I know how bad that lakeshore route can get. I made the decision to just add a little extra time to our trip and take the Indiana Toll Road all the way to US-131.
We hit blue skies and sunshine when we walked out of the Robert Crown Center in Evanston. It stayed that way pretty much until we got to South Bend. I kept looking at my map and the weather ahead of us and decided I should probably make a bathroom stop and grab something to eat before we got in to the really bad stuff.
The Indiana Toll Road has some really nice Travel Plazas about every 30-40 miles. They’re all 7Eleven gas stations and all have some food options. Some have a bigger food court while others just have a chicken joint.
We stopped at the George Ade Travel Plaza which is at Mile Marker 23 Eastbound. It’s just past the interchange with I-94. Usually when we take the Skyway through Chicago, we get on 94 to head home, but this time we stayed on the Toll Road.
I actually chose this one because I knew they had one of the chicken places…and you know how I feel about gas station chicken.
Raise the Roost is a chain of quick service chicken that’s part of the 7Eleven chain. All of the store’s are inside the bigger 7Eleven gas stations or Speedway’s (which is now owned by 7Eleven). I don’t know when this Travel Plaza was rebuilt but I remember at one time, this was a Hardees restaurant and I would occasionally go out of the way to get Hardees. On the Toll Road, the smaller stops all have Raise the Roost as their food options now.
Read more…Robert Crown Community Center
1801 Main Street- Evanston, IL 60202
- (847) 448-8258
- Website
Traveling to Chicago in January is always a crapshoot. We got the worst of it this past weekend.
L and B were both scheduled to skate with their synchronized skating teams at Synchro Illinois this past weekend.
B’s team was scheduled early morning on Saturday so it was decided parents would drive his team’s skaters and we’d all stay at the same hotel in Evanston.
We left Friday morning after school was cancelled not knowing how long it would take us to get there.
It wasn’t a bad trip. We ran into some snow and a lot of rain. We got to Evanston before 1 PM and the kids spent some time hanging out as a team and the parents had a little bit of bonding at a nearby pub.
L’s team was scheduled to take a charter bus Saturday before the sun came up and get to Evanston late morning. The bus driver refused to drive them. It was a whole thing but the unfortunate reality is three of our synchro teams didn’t make it to Evanston.
The two that did because they drove the night before had great skates and both finished second in their flights.
Synchro Illinois is an annual competition held at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston, IL. The public ice rink is on Main Street at the intersection with Dodge Avenue. The Center is fairly new having been completed in 2020. In addition to ice sheets, there are outdoor soccer and softball fields, a library branch, two full sized gyms and a daycare.
Read more…Rosati’s Pizza (Evanston)
1168 Dodge AvenueFriday night is always pizza night, right?
B’s synchronized skating team had a competition in Evanston, IL pretty early on Saturday morning so we got a team hotel Friday night. The coaches and team managers put together a pizza party for the kids Friday night. I’m sure there would have been enough leftovers if I wanted to grab a few slices (it was Giordano’s) but we’re in Chicago. I wanted a specific kind of pizza.
Just before J took B down to hang out with his team, I put in an order to Rosati’s Pizza.
Rosati’s Pizza is a chain of Chicago style pizza restaurants based in Chicago. Well…there are two different chains using the Rosati’s name. Like a few other Chicago pizza places, a family dispute is behind the split.
The Evanston location is part of the original Rosati’s chain. The store is on Dodge Avenue is a shopping plaza at the corner of Dempster Street. The building is kind of an out building to a larger strip mall. It’s on the Dodge Street side of the shopping plaza along with several other take out food places.
Read more…Edzo’s Burger Shop
1571 Sherman AvenueSorry. Still not back in Kalamazoo.
We had to go to Illinois for a skating competition. I’m not going to get in to but it turned in to a whole thing. J, B, and I drove Friday (in the snow storm) to get there. We had a team hotel Friday night and B skated Saturday morning. L stayed at a friend’s house in Kalamazoo and was supposed to get on a charter bus Saturday morning and meet us over there…but the charter bus cancelled leaving three of our teams stranded in Kalamazoo.
The weekend started with a snow day so we were able to get out of the house pretty early. B but wasn’t feeling well. Missing the competition wasn’t an option. We loaded him up and planned on getting him to the hotel hoping things would get better.
We got to the hotel and wanted to get him in before he saw any of his teammates. That didn’t happen either. As soon as we walked in the door, half his team was in the lobby. We made excuses about why he couldn’t come hang out went to the room hoping we could get him to relax.
He eventually said he was hungry. So was I. We weren’t going to bring him to a restaurant and I happened to find a burger shop just down the street from our hotel.
Edzo’s Burger Shop is on Sherman Avenue and Orrington Avenue just south of Davis Street in what I believe is downtown Evanston, IL….at least it felt like a downtown area…it’s a high density commerical district if it’s not actually the “downtown.” The burger shop shares an entrance with an Italian restaurant. Edzo’s takes the signage though and it’s easy to find with the large yellow awning hanging off the building.
Tasty Twist
1137 E. Grand River AvenueSo, I thought I was going to bribe the boy to eat lunch by offering him ice cream. I hate doing that, but also, we were heading to Michigan State University so I wanted to go to the MSU Dairy Store.
It didn’t work. He still didn’t eat his lunch, but J and I still wanted to go to the Dairy Store, so we went to the Dairy Store.
Great idea….if it wasn’t winter break. The Dairy Store was temporarily closed. Now we had promised everyone ice cream so we had to find something else.
It’s January in Michigan. How many ice cream places are actually open?
There’s at least one in East Lansing.
We headed towards Tasty Twist on Grand River Avenue near Stoddard Avenue across the street from MSU’s main campus. The small ice cream shop shares a building with a Korean take out place. It’s right next to the pretty popular with college kids Bell’s Greek Pizza. It’s a little bit of a dated building but it’s easy to spot with a large blue awning with the white Tasty Twist lettering right above the door.
Read more…Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar
3415 E. Saginaw StreetBack to back days in Lansing is not something that happens often anymore.
I was in Lansing on Thursday for work. Friday, I was bringing L over for a figure skating lesson. There’s a former Olympian that she does dance work with every summer at a camp in Wisconsin Rapids. He also coaches in Lansing but doesn’t have a lot of time for skaters that aren’t full time students. As most of his students are Michigan State University skaters, he had some openings over winter break and offered some slots to the Kalamazoo skaters he works with at that camp.
I don’t ever go to the camp in Wisconsin so I’ve never seen her skate with this coach. I needed to take some time off after my trip to Los Angeles so I made sure I was off this Friday to watch her skate.
J was off to so we decided to all go to Lansing. L skated Friday morning in Kalamazoo so we let her relax a little bit before her afternoon lesson in East Lansing. We figured if we were going as a family, we may as well stop somewhere for lunch once we got to town.
There’s not a ton of places I really want to get to Lansing and not a ton of places that I really remember fondly from our time living there. It’s always kind of struggle trying to find some place to eat.
I do have a short list though so I offered up a couple of places to J and let her pick.
She picked Cask & Company Kitchen & Bar on Saginaw Street at that weird intersection where it crosses with Grand River Avenue. The restaurant is in a small shopping plaza on the north side of the road. It’s kind of a partner restaurant to Front 43 Neighborhood Pub. Before it was an upscale pub, this space was XIAO which was marketed as a Chinese grill and lounge.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 