Traverse City, Michigan

Good morning, my friends. We're in a part of Michigan we've never visited before...as we were yesterday, but I forgot to mention it. From here on, we'll be visiting things we've not seen before, and so you might call this the adventurous part of the trip. At some point next week, we'll leave Michigan altogether and visit some new states. New states are always exciting because we get to add stickers to our USA map. I know...when you're my age, it's important to keep your excitement to the smaller things in life.

Before we took off from the campground yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time on my slow-stitching. Sadie was my extreme helper cat for that.

With such dedication, how could I not finish it up yesterday? Well, I finished it after we arrived at this new place, but I haven't washed the Sticky Fabri-Solvy out of it yet. I'll do that today, and then post a picture tomorrow. For now, I'm stitchery-less, which is something of an emergency. I'll make up the next one when I finish here, and then life will be set right again.

Also before leaving yesterday, we took a walk to the other end of the campground where we could get out to see the river. They had a nice treed area with a path so that one could get to the river without walking through other campsites.

"Serene" is the word I'm using to describe it. Looking right, it looked like this:

Looking left...

Okay, so we headed due south yesterday, and we crossed the Mackinac Bridge...the only thing keeping us safe from the trolls. We first had to pay $8 at the toll booth, which seemed like bargain compared to the tolls we paid on the east coast several years back. Sometimes they charge by the axle, and that can get expensive with a dually truck and a fifth wheel.

From there, we left the Upper Peninsula and headed to the down under.

On my side was Lake Michigan.

On Mike's side was Lake Huron. 

And here we go...up and over. By the way, you can ignore those moody skies. It was a mostly sunny day, and we didn't get into any rain.

Michigan has some very nice "roadside parks." In most states, we refer to these as "rest areas," but Michigan has taken them to the next level. We pulled off at one that was particularly pretty. There, we found this memorial. You can read more about what happened right here.

Looking to the right, there was a nice sandy beach with waves rolling in as if coming off the ocean.

Looking left, it looked like this. What a nice place to spend a hot summer day.

Straight ahead, there was a squadron of seagulls.

And if you don't believe me about the ocean waves, here's a little video to bring the point home. (If you can't see the video, then click on the title to this post to be taken to the actual blog.)

This particular roadside park also had a historical marker. I didn't get a picture, but I found the text online. As it turns out, this place is known as Big Rock Point, and here's what its historical marker tells us:

Big Rock Point is named for a large boulder used as a landmark by Native Americans. At least as early as the mid-nineteenth century, Odawa (Ottawa) Indians used Big Rock, which they called Kitcheossening, as a gathering place each spring. The Odawa summered at

Waganaksing (the area between Harbor Springs and Cross Village) but dispersed into smaller groups and traveled during the winter. Each spring they returned to Big Rock, their canoes loaded with sugar, furs, deer skins, prepared venison, bear’s oil, and bear meat pre-

pared in oil, deer tallow, and sometimes a lot of honey. From there they returned to Waganaksing by crossing the bay in wiigwaas jiimaan, birch bark canoes. In 1999 elders and youth from the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians recreated the crossing.

While I was planning this trip, I received an email with a long list of "small town America" on somebody's not-to-be-missed list. I added quite a few of the towns to our trip as suggested places to visit, and tried routing through them as much as possible. Charlevoix was one of those. I always enjoy looking up the Wikipedia page about a place and reading about notable people from the area. The most notable from Charlevoix was Ernest Hemingway, iconic American author, who spent his boyhood summers in the area, setting many of his Nick Adams stories on or near Lake Charlevoix. We were also interested that several small towns on yesterday's drive have multi-purposed their water towers into cell phone towers.

After Charlevoix, we passed through several small towns where cherries are grown in great abundance. Eventually, we drove several miles through cherry groves.

As it turns out, 100 million pounds of cherries are produced here each year. Deep alluvial soil and a temperate climate from nearby Lake Charlevoix (Michigan's third largest inland lake) make this area favorable for growing cherries and other fruits.

Pulling off at another of the scenic roadside parks, we enjoyed this view. Looking left...

Looking right.... 

There was a sign nearby telling us to look out for loons. I would love to have seen a loon, but we didn't see any there yesterday.

And that was pretty much our day of driving yesterday. We're in a very nice campsite here in "Blair Township." This is the view from our back window.

Smitty will want to get out for a walk here, I expect. There's no one on either side of us, or even behind us. We have another night here. Today, we'll be visiting Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. In my reading, I learned of a scenic loop that one can take to see the dunes. We'll first drive into the town of Empire, where the visitor center is located, and we'll pick up a map there. If there's still time left in the day, we'll drive about 20 miles north to Leland, Michigan, another of the charming small towns on my list of places to visit. 

I'm keeping an eye out for quilt shops, but there haven't been any close by in quite some time. I believe we'll find one at our next stop, but I'm not looking ahead that far. For now, I'm going to run my stitchery through a rinse cycle, and then get Block #4 ready for stitching. I worried I didn't have enough floss for this project, but with three blocks down, it looks like I'll have plenty.