You can take the girl out of Cali..

But you can't take Cali out of the girl.

It is still shocking to see deceased deer on the side of the road. It hurts my heart a little. Andrew likes to correct/make fun of me when I talk about people "catching" deer. He says, "No, they didn't CATCH it, they SHOT it." That's sad. I understand it's the whole circle of life, yadda, yadda. I watched the Lion King. But hunting is just not for me. It never will be.

Is it so much to ask for like, maybe Target and Starbucks to be a little closer? An hour and a half just to shop at a store that's not WALMART. Oh how I hate the Wal. The one here isn't so bad, but I just don't want to support them. Unfortunately, we have no choice. Unless we want to make weekly trips to Target, which just isn't an option.

I wonder how many people from around here HATE Starbucks. It seems like small towns don't want a big chain like that around. I can understand that. I'm all about supporting the local economy. But I mean, it's STARBUCKS! How can you not love it?! There is a really awesome coffee shop downtown here. I loves it. They have an amazing cookies and cream coffee smoothie. That doesn't taste like coffee. Fantastic!

It's really difficult to find stuff you need up here. I don't think they've really caught up with the times of you know, INTERNET. I was trying to find Dex a groomer and a puppy class. Where would any normal person look for that stuff? GOOGLE, of course! But no. Not here. So at the vet, she gave me this old looking copy of all the places up here for grooming and puppy classes. And it only had the name of the place and the phone number. Not even where it's located!

Gah, I'm too much of a city girl. Honestly, this place isn't SO bad. I just don't like the winter. Cali girls don't DO winter. And it's too small.

So lets talk about what I DO like. The waterfalls are AMAZING. I love going on waterfall tours with Andrew. He knows where they ALL are. And I'm not going to lie, we went on a snowshoe tour, minus the snowshoes last year, and we had an awesome time. I also love that you don't have to worry about anything here. There's like, no crime. I still lock my doors and all that jazz, but a lot of people don't. And nothing seems to happen. I love that there's no traffic. Now THAT makes my life happy. I like that people are friendly. I enjoyed the movie theater that only charged $6.50 for an evening movie. Until it closed down last summer. Apparently they should have been charging more! I LOVE Winter Carnival. And I also love MTU Hockey! So really, I don't HATE the place. I just prefer home.

And here are some of the things I miss. I miss Trader Joe's. The BEST grocery store on the face of the Earth. I miss Target being literally 30 seconds from my house. I miss my family. I miss Pacific Coast Highway and the beach. I miss shopping malls! And my friends. I miss driving with the sunroof open and the windows down. I miss sunshine. Oh Huntington Beach, you were such a good home to me.

One more thing. I think it is so interesting that people in Michigan say they are going "downstate" if they are heading south. While people in California say they are going to "Nor-Cal" or "So-Cal." We would NEVER say "I'm heading downstate!" But of course I've adapted to the Michigan ways and here, we go DOWNSTATE.