Tony and I were on the road and we stopped at a weird hotel that didn't have proper elevators--instead it had open platforms that went up and down through holes in the floors, like in a video game. Those were freaking me out a bit because we had a lot of luggage and I was afraid that since there was no railing, our bags might stick out and get smashed by the edge of the next floor. I asked the staff if there was another way up, and there was: this very new-looking carbon fiber ski lift. Like a chair on a cable. It went very fast, too.
Neither method would work with our luggage, and it was almost daytime again anyway and we weren't tired, so we decided to just keep driving. We got a little lost trying to leave the hotel and came out on a loading dock, facing the back of a huge amusement park with hundreds of rides, all painted blue, packed so tightly together it looked crazy. I realized, that though I remembered for some reason knowing about the place and knew that it was famous for having so many rides that you never really had to stand in line anywhere, the real secret of the place was that they were really all one big connected ride. The whole place was like clockwork and gears so that the rides, even though they went in and out of each other, would never collide, like the machine guns of old propeller-driven planes being mechanically timed to go between the propeller blades.
Apparently that was a big industry secret, and an employee chased me back into the hotel. We found the front door and got in the car and kept driving. The car wasn't like our car in real life, it was more like Luke Skywalker's speeder thing in the beginning of A New Hope; red, no top, just a windshield. We went a new way along Lake Superior, and drove further and further away from any towns or cities, and at one point the road just ended at the water and our car apparently could hover about 10 feet above the water, so we just drove out over the lake.
The sky was getting lighter, and we followed the shoreline. We were really in the wild, no other people around anywhere, and the trees were old, old growth. Not tall or huge, but they seemed weathered and wise. Seagulls and geese and other birds flew around us, and then a big eagle or an owl flew in front of us. We could barely see it, it seemed to be made out of a wisp of mist at first glance, but it was really shimmering energy that swirled with all colors. We could see a trail in the woods coming up again, and we thought about landing the car and driving, but the spirit bird was not turning. She was sticking to the shoreline, and we decided to follow.
It turned out she could talk, sort of, it wasn't like a voice but more like a thought that came into our heads but we knew we could both hear it. She said "Hello, humans. We don't usually see your kind here. Most of you have forgotten how to fly. I'm going to take you to our most secret shore, one you cannot get to by roads or land."
We followed, and the shoreline became rocky and chaotic and shrouded in mist, and we had to fly our car carefully not to crash into the cliffs or the gnarled old trees sticking out of them. It got steadily more and more difficult, and though as it got closer to sunrise, we still couldn't see well due to the mist.
Finally we came out through a big crack between two giant rock formations, and the shoreline opened up and the mist cleared just as the sun came up over the horizon behind us, bathing everything in gold.
The rock formations were huge, easily as tall as skyscrapers, but with wide open areas of smooth water between them. No trees grew on them, because they were bare rock. They were filled with holes, like enormous sponges with pockets and tunnels big enough to put a house through. The rocks, all hard and even in texture like basalt, were a riot of colors, jade green and mauve and turquoise and gold. As we flew close to one of the formations, we saw the surface of it was peppered with sparkling mineral deposits, mica and fool's gold and hematite.
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