Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

When you work for 50 weeks of the year you look forward to a bit of rest during your 2 week holiday. When you holiday for 43 weeks of the year you might be wondering how you relax.

The answer is to take a holiday from your holiday. Step away from the tourist trail, put the camera down, put your feet up and ponder what has gone before and what is still to come.

Luckily we have just spent 2 weeks staying with friends in Michigan and we have been able to do just that. It's been fantastic. As I've said before, travelling the world is not all ice-creams and lie-ins. I can assure you it involves seeing a lot more sunrises that you would normally choose to and some fairly unexciting days spent on buses and trains.

However, a holiday from your holiday is most certainly all ice-creams and lie-ins. Exceptional home made ice-cream to be precise.

Our fortnight was divided between Jim and Carone's house in the suburbs of Detroit and Caseville, home to Jim's parents Mr & Mrs Dutz on the shores of Lake Huron. Mr & Mrs Dutz didn't actually know that they would be visited by 2 Brits but this I'm told is the norm. Their house is so big that you could actually go unnoticed for several days. Labour Day weekend has just passed and in the States it is the deemed as "the last hoorah of the summer" before school starts and Autumn sets in. It is tradition for friends and family to meet at Mr & Mrs Dutz's house and 21 people in total visited that weekend! We spent our days out on the boat, exploring the area in a golf cart, entertaining Jakob and Siena (two of the most adorable children you could possibly meet), playing cards, drinking in the jacuzzi, (a surefire way to bring on dehydration) and playing lawn darts (a banned game in the USA due to unfortunate incidents of foot-piercings.)

With such lazy days you would think that maybe just light meals would suffice. Oh no. Not when Mr Dutz is around. He is the kind of man my dad and uncle Andrew would get on with. He likes his meals to contain meat and thanks to his wife's exquisite cooking we were being fed meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and occasionally for a late night snack. No one goes hungry at the Dutz residence!

So for 2 weeks we have rested, played, seen the sights of Detroit, eaten and drank very well and to top it all we've even been to Caseville. Not too many tourists can say that. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the ugly woman who sells the corn but there's always a downside.

So Jim, Carone, Jakob, Siena and Mr & Mrs Dutz, thank you so much for putting us up and putting up with us for 2 weeks. We will happily return the favour anytime. Before you visit us we will attempt to get some or all of the following; a big house, a boat, a golf cart and some of those darts you throw down the lawn.