The FIRST reason we were coming to Michigan was to meet my sister, Joyce, and her husband, Jim.  They live in Oregon, and every other year, we have gone there to visit them.  But it's expensive and difficult to get to by plane or by car, so we were exploring another options.  Jim grew up in Marysville, and this year his high school class was having their 60 year reunion.  Jim was class president and intended to go, so we arranged to meet them there!

Before we left Australia, and using a normal hotel site, I made internet reservations at the same Super 8 Motel where they were staying, for the same days - July 18-22.  BUT, one early morning before I got up (unusual in itself), Chris, in his jet-lagged stupor decided that he might be able to browse around on the internet to save us a little money.  So, first he typed in "Super 8, Marysville, MI" and a list came up.  The very first one he clicked on showed him that he could save over $100 for the same hotel on the same dates - AND they had vacancies.  So, clever man that he is, he wanted to FIRST make sure that he could cancel the reservations I had already made.  He was able to do that.  Reservations cancelled successfully.  He then returned to the previous site to make new reservations.  HOWEVER, just before he clicked on "confirm these reservations" he noticed that the address of the hotel didn't sound familiar.  So he double-checked, and, low and behold, even though he had Googled "Marysville, MI" - this hotel was in Marysville, OHIO!  Oops.  No go.  So now we had no reservations anywhere - so he went to the ACTUAL Marysville, Michigan Super 8 and there were no vacancies!  (I guess they hadn't processed our cancellation, yet.)  So, clever man that he is, he went to his favorite hotel site, Hotwire.com, and googled hotels in Marysville, MI.  There were no vacancies.   It turns out that this reunion weekend is ALSO the weekend of the Blue Water Festival, the Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race, Carnivals, Street Fairs, etc! so all hotels were fully booked.  So all hotels in Marysville and Port Huron were fully booked.  But Hotwire will find the closest hotel to where you want, and there was one only three miles away, in Sarnia.  Chris thought that sounded good, and booked the "Hot Deal" - one that is not refundable.  Uh OH!  It turns out that the hotel he booked IS actually three miles - as the crow flies - BUT...it's across the river - in CANADA!  That means that every time we wanted to meet Jim and Joyce, we'd have to go through customs and immigration at the border - which of course was several miles up river, and then several miles back to their hotel - so THAT wasn't going to work.  (BTW - I was still sleeping while all this was going on...)  So...Chris got on the phone and rang hotwire to tell them about his predicament and beg a change of some kind.  They were willing to let him CHANGE hotels - but not REFUND.  So they checked around to find the closest hotel (since all the CLOSE hotels were fully booked) and they found one in Mt. Clemens - over 30 miles away!  He had to accept it or lose his $400.  Now, Mt. Clemens is the place we have scheduled to go NEXT, after Marysville, to visit our friends Larry & Peggy Huntington!  I told him if we were going to be staying THAT far away from Jim and Joyce, we might as well stay with the Huntingtons - but then, of course, we would lose our money.  Sigh.  So Chris has decided that the older he gets, the harder jet lag hits, and when he's tired (and jet-lagged) he doesn't make good decisions.  Well, DUH!  So from now on, we are supposed to schedule him a WEEK of NOTHING when we fly overseas before he has to make any decisions.

OK - so we drove Michigan in order to meet Jim and Joyce.  They were arriving Thursday night late so we were going to get together for lunch on Friday.  We arrived in Mt. Clemens at our cheapo hotel and Chris said, "This place is a dump!"  There was a seedy looking guy sitting on the front stoop - drinking a carton of milk.  There was a marquee out front that said "One week for $199."  We were paying $200 for FOUR nights.  We were not impressed.  The lobby was pretty seedy looking, but the room was clean enough.  However, none of the lights worked, or the phone.  The maid had to come in and crawl under the desk and behind the bed to plug in the fixtures.  We had no bath towels, no ice bucket and no glasses. Not TOO big a deal, but not great.  Chris said he would sacrifice the remaining money in this hotel, even if we couldn't get a refund, if we could get into the Super 8 in Marysville.  So I immediately got on the internet and the phone to talk to the Super 8, but the phone numbers on line were the numbers for Expedia, Hotwire, etc. (not the actual hotel) and  it didn't matter who I talked to, all the hotels in the area were fully booked.  Finally I lucked out and got the direct number for THE Super8 Motel.  I talked to Kim at the front desk and said, "I know you are fully booked, but we DID have a reservation with you and my husband cancelled it when he was in a jet-lag stupor.  IF you get a cancellation, could we be on some kind of a waiting list?"  She said, "We HAVE just had a cancellation, let's see what we can do."  Yay!  Booked!  IN!    Now Chris had to get on the phone to Hotwire and see if they would refund his money AGAIN!  But first, we decided to surprise Larry & Peggy by inviting them out to dinner.  When we told them which hotel we were at, Peggy said, "Get OUT of there!'  She was NOT impressed that Hotwire had assigned us this hotel and she said that when we talked to Hotwire to get our money back, we should suggest that they take that hotel off the list.  It turns out that the local churches pay $30 per night to send the homeless people there!  No WONDER things looked a little hopeless there.  However, that gives more information to Chris to try to get his money back.
So after a lovely little dinner at the Railroad Inn (with free jello shots whenever the train goes by!) he got on the phone and tried and tried to get Hotwire to refund his money.  He did get a sympathetic agent who made copious notes and said to ring back tomorrow after we had checked out and tell the next agent he talked to to "read the notes".  She thought it was probable that we would get our money back.  Meanwhile, Peggy had told us that if there were any disturbances in the night - knifings or druggies or whatever, that we could come on over to her place to finish out the night.
No worries, mate.  We made it though the night without incident, and at breakfast (instant coffee, bread for toast and Cheerios was the only selection - oh, and the milk was curdled) we told the attendant on duty that we would be checking out.  Back to the room to call Hotwire.  Unfortunately, THIS time, the agent Chris got was the SAME agent who grudgingly cancelled the Sarnia hotel and she was NOT inclined to do it again.  She claims that even if we cancel, Hotwire still has to pay the hotel.  Therefore, they had already paid the hotel in Sarnia and we weren't about to get ANOTHER refund that would hurt Hotwire.  But he told his sob story in full detail, said that we would be leaving whether or not we got our money back.  He was pleasant, but firm.  She said she would have to talk to the manager of the hotel and he didn't come on duty until 10:30.  After Chris hung up from her, he immediately rang back and talked to a DIFFERENT agent, who finally said that IF the manager agreed they would refund his money, Hotwire would let him off the hook.  THAT was no problem, so after ALL THIS - it turned out that we saved $100 - Chris' goal in the first place - paid in blood, sweat and tears.

ANYWAY, we had a LOVELY time with Joyce and Jim, though it was WAAAAY too short!  Here are some highlights:

Joyce FORCED me to go to her favorite craft store in Port Huron, and she bought a skein of this "new" and rather strange feathered yarn for a scarf.  I almost bought one, but when I got to the cashier with it, she told me it was $20, so I managed to get out of the store without it.  Any Aussies want to splurge and buy this?

Blue Water Festival means lots of boats and festivities.

There's my sweetie sister!  Love her to bits.

We played a LOT of cards - I think someone is cheating.

I MEANT to get more caught up with this blog, but Chris came home from his appointment much earlier than expected, and since then I have been forced to play some more!  I'm trying!