U.P. top ten: 10. Soo Trip

JB and I have decided to do an "Upper Peninsula" top ten, counting down the 10 most exciting/memorable parts of our vacation at the family cabin on Lake Huron.

So our number 10 memory was our trip to "the big city." Read: Sault Ste Marie. No, there isn't a mall here. There isn't Starbucks or Jimmy John's. You won't find a big museum or art gallery. Or a hot music scene.

But they've got a Wal-Mart and TSC, which I bet is big city enough, if you ask any Yooper.

JB, I, Austin, and Lauren first hit up Karl's Cuisine, our favorite Soo restaurant. While we are partial to this man who catered our wedding and made our wedding cheesecakes, Karl really is a great chef. We met friends and fellow Spartan alumni Mike and Cassie Panik there for lunch. The last time I ate at Karl's, I had this amazing chef salad. I wanted it so badly yet again, but also wanted to branch out and try something new. So I got something new. And a side chef salad. Which really was more like a regular-sized salad. Plus a large piece of our wedding cake: turtle cheesecake. I ate all of it. Then we got a massive stromboli and two pasties to go. A trip to the U.P. really isn't complete without pasties, ya know.

After lunch we went to the super awesome Soo movie theatre, where they take American Express, but they don't take Visa. Who doesn't take Visa??? Hicktown movie theater. Who doesn't have a Chase ATM within a 50 mile radius? Hicktown Soo. (AND Hicktown Nashville, I learned. Definitely can't move to Tennessee now!)

We saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I enjoyed it.

While there, we saw giant movie posters advertising Tim Burton's latest adaptation: Alice in Wonderland. Has anyone else seen the scary Johnny Depp rendition of the Mad Hatter? It's even freakier in bigger-than-life movie poster size and you're minding your own business at the theater when BAM! there it is. This happened to me at a Grand Rapids theater. Celebration Cinema is lucky I didn't have a full bladder because they might have had a mess to clean up.

I love Alice in Wonderland and also Johnny Depp, but seriously, I don't like his Mad Hatter. CREEPERS. He looks sort of like Madonna here, if you ask me. However, the colorfulness of the other posters won me over, so I want to see it. Just not the part with Johnny Depp. Then again, I was fearful about watching Transformers, and ended up loving it. We'll find out March 2010 if I pee my pants in the theater or not.