This past week we have been visiting the beautiful Little Traverse Bay area of Michigan, or as the locals call it the "Tip Of The Mitt".  

Charlevoix is a beautiful small town sitting between Lake Michigan and Lake Charlevoix. The canal between the two was very busy with large boats coming and going. In the 1920s Earl Young, a famous eccentric builder/architect built over 20 houses that are right out of a fairy tale. They are now called the Mushroom Houses, and a major attraction in the area. Some of them are available for vacation rental. Another quirky site in town is the World's Largest Cherry Pie Pan. It was built and used in 1976 as part of the Bicentennial Celebration. A sign next to it lists the huge amount of ingredients it took to make this Guinness World Record Cherry Pie. 

We spent the week at the Petoskey RV Resort, which has to be in the top five of RV parks we have stayed in. The grounds and facilities are beautiful and sites are large.  We spent a few hours one day wading in the waters of the bay looking for Petoskey Stones. If you have not heard of them, they are unique looking stones with fossilized circles on them. With a little help from two local ladies who knew what to look for we found three stones, plus a few other colorful rocks. Later we made the short drive over to the quaint town of Harbor Springs. They were having a Farmers Market and we picked up a package of locally made ravioli. We then ended the day with a few nice Oatmeal Stouts and Soft Pretzels at Petoskey Brewing Company. 

The city of Petoskey sits up on a hill over-looking Little Traverse Bay. It, like all the small lake front towns, has a municipal marina protected by a breakwater with a distinctive marker at the entrance. 
We discovered that Earnest Hemmingway's family had a cottage on a nearby lake. Hemingway used the cabin to recover from injuries he sustained in WWI, and it was from Petoskey that he left to go to New York to begin his writing career. 

One afternoon, we drove over to Gaylord just to visit one of our favorite places to eat, Gobblers of Gaylord. We discovered this place years ago and anytime we are in or near the area we stop in for a Turkey dinner with all the fixings. 
 
We Ducked our first Jeep in a town parking lot.
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I got in my weekly round of golf at the scenic and very difficult Bay Harbor Golf Course.  With many holes right on the lake shore, it was hard to concentrate on golf and not the view. 

We have spent the past two weeks in Traverse City, Michigan. One of the places we always said we would get back to and spend more time. We planned our stay to coincide with the National Cherry Festival, which always starts on the 4th of July weekend. The first event we attended was the Flying Pancake Breakfast. Being rookies, we did not realize that when they say flying pancakes they mean flying pancakes. You had to stand back around ten feet away from the pancake griddles and they would toss you pancakes that you had to catch on your plate. We both did very well and did not drop any of our tossed pancakes. Of course we ate some Cherry Pie and Ice Cream. We also tried a lot of other Cherry inspired foods including BBQ with Cherry BBQ sauce. We liked it so much we bought a bottle of it. 

We made a donation to the Traverse City Boom Boom Club who puts on the 4th of July fireworks and that allowed us to enter VIP seating for the fireworks show. We dressed in our best red white and blue outfits and enjoyed the show from a beautiful setting right out into Grand Traverse Bay. 

We attended a few other events like the Duck Races, Water Dog Jumping and Bingo where I managed to win a whopping $3.50. We purchased the Cherry Festival Pin which we used to get into the beer tent a few evenings and listen to the bands that they had every night. 

Our friends Charlene and Calvin live in nearby Grayling, Michigan so we drove over and visited with them and had a great dinner at the local Friday fish fry place. We had not seen them in 6 years so we had a lot to catch up on. 

Josie found three more new pieces for her pottery collection here in Traverse City. It is getting harder and harder to find pieces she does not have. Finding three was a real bonus. 

When we were here 23 years ago (see picture below) we went Cherry picking at Edmonson's Orchards out on the Middle Peninsula. So we went out there again this trip and picked 3 pounds of sweet cherries in no time. Josie made Cherry Pancakes for breakfast the next morning. Good Eats. While we were out one day our Jeep got Ducked again. That's our second Ducking!

We spent one day on the Lake Michigan coast where our first stop was Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The dunes are very high here and a few brave souls did go down to the water and back up. If you could not make it and had to be rescued you were warned that you would have to pay the price. 

From there we drove up to Leland and stopped in at the historic Fishtown district. We had a great sandwich from the Cheese Shanty and then bought Smoked White Fish and Fish Sausage from Carlson's, a place we remembered from our last visit here 23 years ago.  They also threw in a sample of their salmon pate for us to try. All of them were very tasty to me, Josie was not too impressed by the pate or the sausage. On our way back home we stopped by one of the famous Murdick's Fudge Shoppes in Suttons Bay and picked out four different varieties of fudge. All fat free of course.

I played two rounds of golf at the Grand Traverse Resort. The Jack Nicklaus course, The Bear, and the Gary Player course, The Wolverine which wound its way through the cherry orchards. Both of them were fantastic tracks. On another evening I went over to Merritt Speedway for some good dirt track racing. 

Tomorrow we make another small move, 60 miles north to Petoskey, Michigan.