a busy few days...
Thursday night Mike and I hit the road and headed to Whitehall, Michigan. A dear friend's dad passed away of cancer, and I really wanted to be there for her at his visitation. We hopped in the car about 5:30, drove 2 1\2 hours, were there for an hour, and got home about midnight. It was a LONG trip, but I was glad we were able to be there for her.
Friday morning we were up bright and early, (5am) as we got ready to leave to go camping. Brian's birthday was last Monday, and mine was Thursday, so we were all going camping for the weekend. We packed, and got all our stuff ready. April and Brian came at 7:30, we finished packing, and hit the road. We headed to Traverse City. It's seriously one of the most beautiful places in Michigan. Particularly, we headed over to the M-22 area, Leelenau County, right on Lake Michigan. Filled with small, beautiful little towns. We arrived in Traverse about 11:30, and headed straight up the penninsula to a small town called Northport. We ate at this neat this restuarant, and then continued heading north. We stopped at an apple orchard. They have over 200 antique heritage apples that they grow. It was really fun. We walked around, and read all sorts of facts about apples, and bought some to take with us. We kept heading North to the Lighthouse. We meandered about the state park there, climbed the rocks in the lake, and tried to stay warm. It was much colder than down state!
After the lighthouse we headed south to Leelenau where we would be staying. Armed with our tent?!? and space heater we determined to be brave! The campground was really nice, and our site was really pretty. We were right on the lake. Seems nice, until it's 40 and the wind is whipping off the lake.. yeah, it was COLD! We tried to get a fire going, but the wood was wet and we were really struggling to get it going. We finally got it moving, and then... it started to rain..we were absolutely miserable and I think all were thinking that we'd rather be in a hotel than in our nylon tent. We fended off the rain, cooked our brats from the esteemed Pleva Meat Market, climbed in the tent at 8:30 with out dinner, cozied in, and were asleep by 9. I think we longed for our days of the cabin in Empire wth our good friends Adam and Nate.
Saturday we drank our hot cocoa and warmed up from our 30 degree overnighter...and headed to the small town of Leland. It's an old fishing town. lots of stores and fun things to see. It was particularly fun, because this time of year the Salmon swim up stream, and there was tons of fish in the inlet that we could watch. After Leland, we headed to GlenArbor, and shopped around for a while. Our favorite place being The Cherry Republic.
We ended our evening heading to Empire, Michigan. We have spent tons of time here, as this is where our friends cabin was. We had dinner at Friendly's Tavern which seriously has the best burgers you can imagine, ate ice cream from Tiffany's, and then headed up Pierce Stocking Drive to watch the sunset over Lake Michigan. A beautiful and relaxing way to end our evening.
Sunday morning we headed to Traverse, and enjoyed the shops around town before coming back home.
We really had a great time, albeit the cold nights in the tent. It's a beautiful area, and I'm extremely thankful for the many memories I have up there, with family and good friends. Although the days of the beautiful cabin are gone, I know we will forever hold it dear in our hearts and think back fondly of those days.