Interlochen or Why You Should Never Go Back

As I've mentioned before, my family wasn't much for traveling great distances when I was younger. Almost all of my childhood vacations were spent in Northern Michigan, specifically Interlochen State Park. Interlochen is probably most known for the Center for the Arts/music camp which has hosted several notable alumni like Josh Groban, Norah Jones, and Sufjan Stevens. Our summers were mostly spent tenting it up within the campground.

Looking back, I wish my travel experience had been more robust, but in my younger years, I loved getting to sleep in a tent, ride my bike throughout the campground, making friendships on the playground that would last an entire week, and swimming in waters that were very much lacking in any sort of creature with the capability to kill you. 

A big logging wheel. I used to climb the shit out of this thing.

Since I've been in a relationship with Katie, I've been fortunate enough to visit her family in Northern Michigan on numerous occasions. We've spent some time revisiting some of my favorite vacation spots including Traverse City and the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. We hadn't had a chance to stop by Interlochen, though, until our most recent trip.

What we found was more than a little disappointing. There are two sides to the campground. Back on our vacations, one side was almost completely full of campers and RV's. The other side was almost exclusively tents. While Katie and I were there, both sides were packed with giant RV's. Now, I have nothing against traveling in a recreational vehicle. Katie and I both hope to one day make enough money as internet celebrities to buy an RV and spend the rest of our lives touring the country. But seeing massive vehicles line the entirety of the campground with almost no tents in sight was a jarring sight given the way I'd remembered things from my childhood.

It got worse from there. There were three things that I really wanted to do. The first was to walk to the playground to swing on the swings. I'd spent many a day on those swings with my sisters and the various friends we'd make. We walked up towards where the playground used to be only to discover it was almost non-existent. There was still a teeter totter and some shitty new playground equipment that looked like it had been designed so kids wouldn't get hurt but also wouldn't have any fun. Everything I'd remembered had been removed. Still, we made the best of it and teetered that totter like it was going out of style.

Next, we walked up towards the bathroom so that I could buy a soda from the vending machine. I do realize that I can buy a soda from pretty much anywhere now, including various vending machines. But when I was younger, I'd save my change for almost the entire year so that'd I've have enough to waste on soda whenever I felt like it. As we neared the bathrooms, it became quite obvious that there was no longer a vending machine.

Heartbroken, we did a short tour through the rest of the campground, and then I took Katie on the path towards the beach for our final disappointment. On the beach path, there had always been a tree which we had affectionately referred to as the gum tree as it was covered in gum.  I don't know who started this tradition or how long it actually lasted, but every year we'd look forward to walking past and adding our gum to the tree. There was a tree along the path that had a few sticks of gum plastered to it, but it was obviously not the same tree. Perhaps it had collapsed from the added weight of years of chewing gum, or someone had finally realized just how fucking gross it actually was, but my hope of reliving another of my childhood memories had quickly dissipated.

After this, we made our way back to the car and out of the park. I wasn't completely disappointed. Even though the park was for more crowded than it had been in my memories, it still felt nice to be in such a familiar place. But it did make me feel thankful that I've been able to experience so much more of the United States since the summers I spent in Interlochen.

And it made me realize the problem with returning to the same places year after year. As much fun as I had in Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks on both occasions I spent there, the second trip to each spot was missing something that the first had contained. Nostalgia had tainted our memories in such a way that we'd never really be able to replicate the experiences we'd had before. As much as I would love to return to OBX, Hilton Head, Virginia Beach, or even Interlochen, I'm much happier with our current plan of trying something new each year. When we use our past as a yardstick for the present, we end up limiting our experience based on an unobtainable ideal.

We'll probably go back to OBX one day. In fact, I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without returning multiple times. Perhaps one day we'll even spend a weekend camping at Interlochen. But the one thing that attempting to relive some of my childhood memories taught me is that in travel, the direction I like to look is forward. There's so much of the world to see and only a limited time frame to see it in.