I hate Michigan

grrrrr This state drives me absofreakinglutely insane. If you've never been to Michigan, you probably have no idea what "Michigan Turn" means. I have a hard time explaining it without a lot of really bad words, so I searched for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left If that page makes any sense to you, congratulations! You could go to Michigan. The funny thing is, the intersection on the bottom of the page is the one I was in today. Really. Grand Haven at 31 and Robbins Rd. What that picture doesn't show is that a bit farther down on Robbins Rd. is a turn into Meijer. I had to go to the Meijer gas station for a mystery shop today. I had to go to the bank ATM first, which is a bit farther down Robbins. So I executed the Michigan turn. Hey, I've been living here nearly a year. I can read road signs. Still don't understand the people that do that left turn when they have a red light, but hey. It's Michigan. When I came back, I figured I could just turn left onto the road to Meijer. No. I couldn't. Prohibited.

So I got to go through the intersection again. And since you can't turn left onto 31, that meant not only sitting at the red light to go through the intersection, but then to do a U-turn in the car dealership parking lot and wait for traffic to clear out so I could get back onto the road. That was 1 full red light. Then I sat there through a second red light waiting in line for the intersection. You'll be happy to know that you can actually go straight through the intersection. That meant I got to avoid the Michigan turn that time. Of course, by the time I got up to the intersection (seriously, I was like 5 car lengths away from the intersection) I was first in line to sit and wait for red light number THREE. I did manage to get through. Finally.

Then I headed home. I was already going ot be almost a half hour late picking the kids up from a birthday party. The mom had said it kind of ended at 4, but they'd be there so the kids were welcome to stay longer if I had more errands to do. But still, I did want to get them near 4. So, going through Grand Haven, there was quite a bit of traffic. Then it stopped. Dead stopped. Why? Oh, because of the freaking DRAWBRIDGE! Seriously. Not only did I get stuck in the intersection from HELL for over 15 minutes, I got to wait another 20ish for the drawbridge.

Thankfully, the parents didn't mind, they just kind of laughed.

Next time I hope to move to a normal state. Maybe Arkansas.