Lower Peninsula Michigan: Thursday, June 9, 2022 | |
Petoskey is a fabulous little city on the shores of Lake Michigan's Little Traverse. | |
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Today was yet another schizophrenic day. Cloudy drab, cheery sunshine, drab, sun, and so forth. My ultimate goal was Highway 119, the tree-tunnel highway. Even a quarter-mile of tree-tunnel road gets me excited. This road promised 31 miles of tree-tunnel heaven, and along Lake Michigan to boot.
Our first surprise of the day came in East Jordan, a spec of a town at the very bottom tip of the South Arm of Lake Charlevoix. The amazing thing about this part of Michigan are all the lakes that flow into bigger lakes, that flow into bays, that are attached to Lake Michigan. Sure enough, one could theoretically sail from East Jordan to anywhere in the world connected to an ocean. That’s true for a lot of these little towns around here, so that wasn’t the surprise in East Jordan.
Like most towns here, East Jordan has a city campground. It isn’t anything special, so that wasn’t the surprise. The campground was hosting a farmers market. It was funny, because there were no more than ten vendors, and not one of them were selling anything close to a vegetable. Pot holders, they had. Handmade trinkets, no problem. And rocks - plenty of rocks.
So here was the surprise - the Petoskey Rocks. A Petoskey rock is both rock and fossil. The fossils imprint a pattern of hexagons onto the rock. In fact, the coral that makes this pattern comes from the Hexagonaria Genus. I know, Hexagonaria has got to be one bad-ass STD, right? Anyway, the rocks are really cool and are found all over this area. We collect rocks from places we visit. We cheated and bought one just in case we don’t find one in the wild.
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Our second surprise came just down the road in Ironton. It boasted a free ferry that crossed the South Arm of Lake Charlevoix. Ferries are yet another one of those blasts from the past that never fails to put a smile on my face. I looked at the map to see just how strategic this ferry was. Sometimes a ferry is the only river crossing for miles so it is both quaint and needed. The Ironton Ferry didn’t seem to be very strategically placed. There was nothing prominent on either side of the waterway that couldn’t be reached by a nearby bridge. Who cares. I still love ferries and this one was worth stopping to watch. | |
The Ironton Ferry ran on a cable stretched across the lake. | |
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Petoskey, the town, not the rock, was surprise number three. So far, it is my favorite quaint town up here. Located high above Little Traverse Bay, Petoskey’s downtown was worth a good long zig-zag walk. The main railroad through town was spectacularly converted into a garden and green-space walkway.
The streets were laid out in all kinds of crazy angles which made for some of those wedge-shaped buildings like New York’s Flatiron Building. The Crooked Tree Arts Center with a theater, setup for live plays, was housed in a restored church. It turns out that a church converts into a theater and stage very nicely. The stain-glass windows added a nice artsy touch.
All these tourist towns, including Petoskey, have the ice cream parlors, fudge makers, antique shops, outfitters, brew pubs, and now distilleries. The better towns skip the T-shirt shops with the goofy and/or insulting memes and go straight to high-end hip clothiers featuring Patagonia, Kühl, Northface, Outdoor Research, and the like. Petoskey had plenty of these. The latest craze are the gourmet popcorn shops. Some of these towns sport up to three of them. I couldn’t imagine one shop making it solely on popcorn. Petoskey ups the ante with a pretzel shop. OK, a little pretzel stand in a mall, maybe. But you have to sell a ton of pretzels to meet your overhead in a classy town like Petoskey.
Petoskey also has a gorgeous lake front. Lakefront Park stretches for miles and includes the requisite marina. We walked along the shoreline. Landscapers were busy planting flowers in huge flowerbeds everywhere. Even with the sun out, the breeze coming off the water was biting. It was June 9th and they were just starting to bring out the flowers. I calculate that summer lasts no more than two weekends up here.
I was blown away by all the old restored homes. Many towns have a string of century old mansions that are still in decent shape. Petoskey had huge neighborhoods of these grand old dames all spiffied up and deliciously landscaped. Where did all that old money come from? Where did all the new money to keep them up come from? And all for two weekends of summer.
Perhaps the best part of Petoskey was that the sun came out for good as we walked the streets. In the distance we could see plenty of cloud action, but a nice donut hole of blue sky filled Petoskey with a golden glow. We are at the 45th Parallel - halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. I’ve noticed that the sun’s angle, even as close to the Summer Solstice as we are on this June 9th, gives off a warmer yellower tone than the sun in Bucerias Mexico that we enjoyed this past winter.
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Petosky's version of New York's Flatiron Building. | |
Is J.C. Penney still in business? | |
Petoskey's Art Center and Theater in a restored church. | |
Unfortunately, Petoskey's movie theater has been repurposed. | |
At home, we have a cardinal taking up residence in a tree just outside our front window. He is kind of daft as he constantly smacks into our sliding door. I couldn't help but take a photo of this metal version. | |
After leaving the town of Petoskey, we stopped at Petoskey State Park. I needed to buy the Michigan Passport, the window sticker that allows us to use a whole bunch of state recreational facilities including many boat landings. Once properly stickered, we checked out the campground. The Michigan State campgrounds in the UP disappointed us. They were cramped and poorly laid out. Petoskey State Park’s campground surprised us. It was roomy, the sites made sense, and it was clean. The beach, in front of the sand dunes looked mighty good, but the cold wind sculpturing the dunes kept everyone out of the water. I guess we are all waiting for that special two weekends of summer. | |
The sand dune beach at the Petoskey State Park. Don't let the sunny day fool ya. It was cold, burrrrr. | |
Our last stop before Highway 119 was Harbor Springs. I have 13 QTs highlighted in my Gazetteer for this area. Harbor Springs was the 7th on my list. Four ice cream parlors and two fudge shops in just two downtown blocks - it’s a tourist town, but a nice one. We bought a single-scoop two-berry cheesecake ice cream in a chocolate covered waffle cone to split. At nearly $10 it had better be good. It was, but Jeez… | |
And just as I was recently writing about the Lyric Theater in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, here comes the Lyric in Harbor Springs. I don't think they specialize in 1950s horror shows. | |
Harbor Springs had a plethora of ice cream shops. One was "cash only" - a curious old fashioned feature. | |
OK, drumroll. This was it - Highway 119. My goodness, it was everything I had hoped it would be. 31 miles of bliss. It is the finest road that I have ever driven. The narrow ribbon of smooth blacktop with a dense forest of tree trunks hugging the side of the road and branches draping overhead forming a true dark green tunnel kept me in awe. Occasionally an opening revealed the azure gem of Lake Michigan far below the cliff. Fortunately, with barely any traffic, we had the road all to ourselves. We could stretch out the experience by puttering along at 25 mph. Of course, the tight twists and turns also helped keep the speed way down. I was thankful that we got to drive this sacred road in full sun. Although the yellowish rays couldn’t penetrate all the way to the roadbed, they did light up the tree tops with an ethereal translucent glow. The yellow-green hue of the new early season leaves added to the golden glow. Just wow! | |
I couldn't get enough of this road. | |
Occasionally, there would be a break in the trees. | |
As I mentioned earlier, not everyone was in favor of the Line 5 tunnel. | |
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By now it was getting late. Fortunately, we are in the western fringe of the eastern timezone during daylight savings time. This means it stays light out until nearly 10 pm. So, on the way back we headed for Boyne City, for QT number 8.
It was another nice small town and worth walking the downtown streets. On a side street, I heard some real good singing. I told Wanda that if that is a guy singing live and not a recording it might be worth checking out. When we turned the corner, we saw that it was a three-man band, the Cabana Boys, with the odd configuration of an electric guitar, acoustic 6-string guitar, and an acoustic 12-string guitar. All three sang. They were playing an interesting version of Bonnie Rait’s Angel of Montgomery.
It took a lot of talent, which these guys had, to lure me in with that kind of a setup. I’m not a big acoustic guitar fan and with no bass or percussion to provide a little oomph I was skeptical. But their version of Angel of Montgomery was so good that they deserved at least one more tune. It was an outdoor gig. We sat down at a table, ordered ridiculously expensive drinks and gave them their shot.
So here was their schtick - they would noodle around for a minute or two and then fall into their very original version of a cover tune. Most bands that follow this formula struggle with the noodling around part. Not these guys. Their noodling had interesting structure to it. They weaved really nice melodies into their noodling. So, on their second tune, and after some terrific noodling, they fell into a very original version of Norwegian Wood that even Paul McCarthy would have been impressed with. Then, Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth got the Cabana Boys' treatment. Even with new chords, altered melodies, and totally revamped guitar harmonics they actually improved a great tune.
I was enthralled. We nursed our drinks for seven or eight tunes. Every song was a terrific masterpiece. It was a perfect cap to a perfect day.
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OMG! A food truck rally. How great is that? | |
This is truly a great time to be a beer connoisseur. Micro breweries are everywhere. | |
The Taproom was quite the venue. It features micro-brews, food, and live music. | |
The surprisingly marvelous Cabana Boys. | |
Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum. | | | | |
