Hey, I’m less than an hour away–you wouldn’t leave me out, would you?
puppy dog whimper
Persephone, you bet I’ll look you guys up when I move! I’m leaving a lot of friends behind…
I think I’ll miss cultural diversity…Grand Blanc seems to be a little staid, though it’s very pretty, lots of open space & farm/horse property. My dogs are going to go nuts with five acres :D…we’ll have to fence off some of it for them. But some aspects of the trendiness & pretention that have become prevalent in Denver are starting to irritate me. I live in a very diverse 'hood in east Denver, & rather like it.
And…Sue Duhnym…my SO has a C&R licence & collects giant exotic automatic firearms. He does not have the heart to hunt, and the firearms are locked up, unloaded, except when we go out to shoot them at a range. So…you can make that tree hugging liberals with Really Big Guns (his) and Really Big Dogs (mine) moving to Michigan.
you guys are making me feel better about Michigan already!
Oh…I guess we don’t really have to worry about burglars.
Oh, I GUESS, if you’ve just GOTTA tag along with us COOL folks, we’ll invite you too, mrblue. Just don’t cramp our style, okay? 
Carina: There’s a shooting range in Davison, just a very short drive from Grand Blanc, if you ever want to go there (me, I don’t own any guns–I just used to work in Davison, and that’s how I know it’s there :))
**
Thanks.
Now that I know where your family lives, I suggest you tone it down on the Michigan-bashing.
Please tell us about that bastion of intelligence, taste and trendiness where you live now? We can’t wait.
We’ll just be here on our porches, whittling, until you do.
Or maybe looking for road signs that don’t have bullet holes in them.
I’ll be honest, I don’t have many kind words for Flint. I interned at the paper there (which is actually pretty good) and my best friend has a full time job there. It’s not a good place for a 23-year-old guy to be. Of the women he’s met and gone on dates with, they were all based on old college connections. None of them came from Flint.
The downtown is the deadest thing I have ever seen, and I was born and raised in Detroit proper. Yeah, U of M-Flint is there, but I’m a Spartan, so what do I care?
[hijack] Did any of you hear that UM and MSU are gonna play a hockey game at SPARTAN STADIUM? That might be the coolest thing to ever happen in Michigan.[/hijack]
Actually, the cultural center is pretty nice and once you get away from the UAW controlled parts of the region, there is some culture. But watch out, there’s a LOT of UAW domnated parts of the area. Mesh-backed hats as far as the eye can see…
As for Michigan, it’s a nice place if you like the outdoors. I’m in Grand Rapids right now and can’t wait to see my first sunset over Lake Michigan (actually, I saw one when I went skydiving, but that was too awe inspiring for me to even contemplate).
If you want beauty, go to Traverse City. The Cherry Fesitval is the weekend after July 4th and is probably the largest of the plethora of fruit-based festivals Michigan hosts. They even got Christina Aguilera to perform there last year. And, again, you’re right on Lake Michigan.
I’ve never seen the UP, but I hear it’s breathtaking.
And then there’s Detroit. I love this city still. It’s got a vibrant music scene in both rock and hip-hop. Hell, techno was founded there. Not to mention Motown. It’s a good music town and the DIA is a decent art museum. Greenfield Village is also pretty cool, kind of the Colonial Williamsburg of the midwest.
Hope you enjoy our enchanted mitten.
I had no idea there were so many Michigan Dopers… 
And that’s a good thing how?
It’s lovely – and I’m not even an outdoorsy person. Of course, my one experience with it was staying in Houghton for a week while my brother had a hockey camp at Michigan Tech, and I got sick of Houghton after a while (as I said, not an outdoorsy person). But it’s really pretty anyway (and I had a lot of Middle-earthy thoughts, being up there :D).
Oh, and another point in our favor: When the Royal Shakespeare Company performed the Henry VI/Richard III cycle in the U.S. this spring, Ann Arbor was the only place they went – and they’ll be back in 2003 and 2005!
Another Michigander checking in.
I’ve lived here in Flint all my life and while it isn’t the great repository of culture that places like New York might be, it DOES have a great cultural center. Agreed, downtown is the deadest place outside of a cemetary that you’re likely to ever see but there’s other things to do than wander around downtown ya know
Look us up when you get here Carina and we’ll hit the piano bar or something. It’s pretty much half way between Flint and Grand Blanc and has VERY good food and music!
I’m from the UP…lived there from when I was 6 all the way through when I went to college in K’zoo at 18, then off and on during summers for the next 4 years.
Beautiful place to visit. You can literally go sight-seeing somewhere new (visit a waterfall, go hiking, check out a ghost town, etc) each day for years on end. Lots and lots of scenery. Don’t recommend living there though, unless you have an enormous tolerance for isolation and boredom. I’m not joking when I say there are areas in the UP where you can hit seek on your car stereo and watch it go through the entire band without a hit, FM or AM.
Carina: You might want to check out this site:
You busy this weekend? It’s the 2nd Annual Michigan Summer Dopefest, and we’d love to have you there! Just click on the link in my sig for more info, or email at flintdope@hotmail.com.
You’ll love living in Michigan Carina. I grew up half way between Flint and Lansing. So I know both cities good and bad points.
Yes, Flint took a bad hit when the auto biz went bad back in the 80’s. But, there is culture there. There isn’t a hotel downtown, but hey.(I stayed at the Radisson the last weekend it was open)
Given the choice, I moved to Lansing. Anything you can’t find in Flint, you should be able to find here. It’s only an hour away.
In Michigan, you can travel Europe without ever leaving the state:
Frankenmuth Germany
Hamtramack Poland
Bannister Czech
Holland Netherlands
My favorite thing in Michigan is Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. They have an awesome exchange program with the Smithsonian.
Lake Huron is nice, but wait til you see a sunset over Lake Michigan.
And those guys in mesh hats with guns? Don’t worry, they’re probably to busy building their deer blinds to pay much attention. (Just remember to wear something orange in the woods in the fall and winter)