Marquette is a good place to go in January. It wouldn’t seem so, but if you’re looking for winter, in the full winterness of the season, this is the place to go. Even this year, where the first foot of snow fell as my plan landed Monday night, it’s a good time to go for quintessential Winter.
Most people probably don’t feel a need to go to winter, and most years, I count myself among them. As a naturalized Californian, I consider snow to be something that other people deal with, or other people go play in if they want to.
Every year, though, I have to assess whether I’m ready to face those frigid demons of my past. Most of the time, I can take a pass on it.
This week, business brought me to Marquette, Michigan, on the northern edge of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s an odd city. Small, and with the core Midwestern values, but also oddly cosmopolitan. Coffee shops abound. Independent dining and shopping graces the downtown areas. I know there is a Wal-Mart, but I never saw it the entire time I was in town. To be sure, there are plenty of signs of rubber-stamp America, each hamburger and French fry punched out of the same piece of carboard. But there is plenty of variety, that lively spice, to be found here.
More…. later, perhaps. When I’ve finished wrapping my mind and my self around this newfound respect for a snowy mindscape.
[Originally posted on my blog at Matador Travel.]