Welcome to Hell!
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2008
1
21
37
Trip End
Ongoing
Hell,
Michigan,
United States
Saturday, October 18, 2008
On the way we stopped in Lansing for lunch and this place was dead, nobody on the street, in the yard and then I found out why. The Spartans were playing (college football) and so the whole town is watching this. You could shoot a canon and not hit anybody, that's how quite it was "down town". We were on a mission, no time for college football, it was time for Hell.
It's in the middle of absolute nowhere. The town can't be found on a map, you have to go to the website for Hell where they will give you the address for your GPS system to find Hell. All the while driving over there, I came up with as many Hellish jokes and sayings, cracking myself up. I knew not to bring any of them up, knowing that those people have heard pretty much all of them to no end.
I was so excited to drive there, the few miles before I arrived, I was almost nervous, this was a milestone in my trip, it was the start of it all. And then there it was. 4 buildings and a few homes (it has 266 residents). Hell! We had arrived in Hell! I went to the local fish/bate/grocery/liquor/t-shirt/etc. store and then took a few pictures of Johannah in front of one of the Hell signs. I went in to the only place to meet people and that was the Dam Inn. I scooted on the bar (if you want to meet people, you need to sit at the bar otherwise you will not be able to start a conversation with anybody. I had the joy to meet 5 of the locals (hey, that's 20% of Hell!). The bar ladies were also very nice. It was funny, they had Charles Shaw wine as one of their wine offerings and I asked them if they are familiar with Trader Joe's ( a supermarket chain), they had never heard of it, I told them that we call it "2 Buck Chuck" in California because Trader Joes is selling it for $ 1.98. Damn, they're drinking some crappy wine in Hell. Maybe I should chance some of my ways, hahaha. Either way, I wish I could stay in Hell for the night. BIG bummer.
They don't have accommodations there, the closest motel was miles away and that would defeat the purpose and it was too cold at night to stay in the car (I would have). When I told them about how this was a miles tone for me and that they were the first on my "travel napkin", they were so enthusiastic about that. Couple of guys at the bar were asking all kinds of questions, the usual ones when I tell people what I'm doing: Where are you going from here, how long will you be doing this, check this/that out when you go here or there....I didn't want to drive in the dark so I had to get on my way. I wanted to take JOhannah out in Hell before leaving. What was really nice was when I turned around to leave from the bar, I heard the bartenders say to each other about me: "She's so cool, yeah, she's very nice and how great that she does this, she's great". Nice things to hear on the way out of Hell. The road back to the freeway was beautiful, no wonder that there are so many motor cycle riders in the area, it's a great place to cruise, I was thinking of my good friends in Holland, my motor cycle friends, they would love this! Marja, Johnny, Richard, Mary, Marja and Herman, deze kant uit brommen!
Onto Detroit...which I wasn't too excited about, I wanted to stay in Hell, it was so warm there...I didn't want to go to another big city but Detroit was a strategic place to stay for the things I had in mind after Michigan......
