Do you want fries with that?

Spending my summers in Northern Michigan as a child, I came to the realization that one of the reasons for "summering" was to get away from it all. Bellaire, MI, the town closest to Torch Lake, always had a grocery store, two gas stations, a few ice cream shops, half a dozen restaurants, and that's about it. I remember quite clearly the summer that McDonald's opened up on the main street through Bellaire; everyone was immediately against it. "We will never eat there! It's destroying the culture of this little town!" people said. On the other hand, it brought much-needed jobs and some economic stability to the financially uneasy Antrim county. Personally, I've stopped at that McDonald's maybe twice in my life; I try to stay away from fast food in general, and when I'm Up North, it makes more sense to me to try and support the locally-owned businesses.

Anyhow, here's a really cool map of the United States that shows the location of every McDonald's in the country. It's pretty interesting. If you look closely, you can even see the singular dot of the McDonald's in Bellaire!