DAY 1 (Thursday, September 24)...

Half of our group met up at the Great Lakes Crossing Mall while the other half met at a Meijer in East Lansing. Then we motored in caravan style from our meet up point to the Doherty Restaurant in Clare, MI.

Once again, we had some issues with the whole "permission" thing. The mall security guard drove up and told us that we could not put up signage. We told him that this was for charity and we'd only be there until 9:30am. He eventually got the green light from management and all was good.

While we were there, the MAW lady came to take some pictures and to give us all our “wish wands”. Supposedly our event will be posted on their website, not sure that it made the cut last year.
We had 11 MINI's at the mall location with 17 peeps (or MINIac's as we like to call ourselves). 9 MINI's showed up at the East Lansing location and then we met up with another 3 MINI's in Clare. 23 MINI's and 41 MINIac's - CRAZY!

While driving to Clare, we decided to introduce some of the newer folks to MINI ballet. We made sure that there were no non-MINI's on the road as we weaved back and forth from right lane to left lane; every other MINI in different lanes. "1-2-3 Switch Lanes!" was told over the walkies. It's a sight to behold!
The Doherty had a nice sign welcoming us. We all ate lunch and before we were on our way, we passed out the games. We had worked hard on the games which were Autograph Bingo, the ABC game and some other puzzles to keep people busy on their trip.

We made a slight detour and went through the Tunnel of Trees over by Cross Village and stopped for some refreshments at the Leg's Inn. Then continued on to the bridge.
Made a photo op stop at the park by the Mighty Mac and then crossed over our first body of water; the Straits of Mackinac.
We then gathered together at The Galley Restaurant in St. Ignace. There we had some raffles and some "secret" auctions. It was a lot of fun. Jerome and I bid on a beautiful bag of...well it turns out we ended up paying $20 for a $3 container of roasted peanuts...but heck, it's for charity.

By the time we were leaving the restaurant and heading to our hotel in Newberry, it was already dark and we had about an hour or so to drive the very dark roads of the UP.

We saw a coyote on the side of the road. I think we woke him up because when I saw him, he was yawning.

As we were getting closer to our motel, we drove right next to a correctional facility that was just down the road a piece. This did nothing to ease our minds as to what kind of motel we were going to be "living" in for the next 3 nights.

Turns out, our committee member that was in charge of finding the motel did a fine job. It was clean and didn't smell. The owners were young and apparently had just done a bunch of work on them to make them look presentable.

We threw up our signs; MichiganMINI.org banner, Make-A-Wish banners, MINI banners and our sponsor signs. Brought out the fire pit and was about to build a fire when most everyone said they were tired. So, we put it off a day.

Then to bed.