Saturday, May 3, 2014

Rural Library Conference.

I spent the last 3 days at the Michigan Rural and small libraries conference.  At least I spent a day and half at the conference.
We left at 5:15 AM and arrived in St. Ignace at 10:15 AM to catch the 11:00, waiting a a huge line with about 200 other librarians, who had planned on the same thing. and were told it would be 2:00, which turned into 3:00.
On Monday April 28, there was still 3 feet of ice on the lake/straitts, which limited the ferry companies preperations.   We spend the next 4 hours walking in the rain, and wind (I think it was 34 degrees) to the restaurant for lunch,  geocaching, at least Danah and I did, notice the ice in the background.
 and setting in a very crowded waiting room.with another 200-300 librarians to find out we would be on the 3:00 ferry (they only had one running ) We finally boarded Sheplers "barge," yes barge, seats for about 60, and two Mackinac City transit buses strapped to the deck. 

This is what it looked like from the barge/ferry.



We finally made it to the Hotel  ab out 4:15. 
 


in time to stand in another line to check in, and go to our rooms for a very few minutes before dinner. 
This is how my room was decorated.  They were all different.  It is good thing it was dark at night because i thing this wall paper would have kept me awake.




 





















The service was wonderful.  The waiters pulled out our chairs, and put our napkins on our laps.   The food was wonderful.   
The keynote speaker Jessymn West talked about the 21st century Digital Divide, she was fantastic.

We attended lots of workshops in Thursday and met lots of new people by late afternoon the fog had cleared enough to be able to see the view from the famous grand hotel porch.
 



 The Mackinac bridge is in the distance, (really it is)



I think we all had a great time, can you tell.