Lower Peninsula Michigan: Wednesday, June 8, 2022 | |
Today, we toured the grand town of Traverse City. | |
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So far, from what we’ve seen, the northern LP seems bi-polar. The little towns and villages that dot this area are either struggling or dreamily quaint. Granted, this is only our second day here so this observation is based on very limited data.
However, not surprisingly, the nicer towns are closer to either Lake Michigan, or one of the big lakes that feed into Lake Michigan, or both. One thing is consistent, the boating possibilities are spectacular. The size of the lakes vary widely, but the water clarity is pure crystal. There are miles and miles of lakes, feeding into lakes, feeding into channels that feed into more lakes.
Residents along one especially large and stunningly beautiful blue lake, Torch Lake, had lawn signs pleading not to use fertilizer. They were determined to avoid choking their superb lake with algae. So far, it seems to be working.
Another consistency are the back roads. The hilly forests are remote and delightful. It seems like every little town has a small town campground. Eastport, a tiny speck of a town, operates the best one we've seen so far, Barnes Park Campground.
With 76 widely scattered sites and miles of wooded hiking trails, Barnes is the quintessential county park. At $36 a night, it is expensive, but you get electrical and water hookups, plus all the elbow room you need in a gorgeous setting. We were drawn in by the hiking trails, so we stopped and banged off a quick 1.25 miles through a thick maple, oak, aspen, and white pine forest. Barnes Park is located on a thin strip of land between Torch Lake and Grand Traverse Bay, a large arm of Lake Michigan.
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A main trailhead for a network of trails at Barn's Park. | |
Curiously, the trail starts off blacktop but soon turns rugged and rustic. | |
The light played off the yellow-green early-season leaves. | |
Elk Rapids, a small town sandwiched between Elk Lake and Grand Traverse Bay, is like Charlevoix, a quaint beauty on the upper-end of the bi-polar scale. I have noticed that the nicer towns have revived their downtown movie theaters. I love the old marques, especially when refurbished to past glory. Sadly, my hometown, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, lost its two downtown theaters. The Fox Theater was truly grand with red velvet seats and a large curved balcony. The more subdued Lyric Theater specialized in syfy horror shows. I endured many childhood nightmares of giant blobs and spiders the size of houses from Lyric movies. Oddly, I kept going back to the Lyric. | |
Elk Rapdis' version of the downtown clock. | |
Not a spectacular movie marque, but the theater is still going. | |
This nice mural was next to an antique shop with tons of interesting junk. | |
This novelty lawn ornament store, Nifty Things, must be a local franchise. We have seen them in all the upscale towns. | |
The shop owner constructs these handcrafted birdhouses in his shop for all to watch. Each one is a one-of-kind design - no two are alike. | |
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Next up, the granddaddy of the area, was Traverse City. The city seemed a lot larger than the 16,000 it lists as its 2020 population. I was a little leery as we approached the outskirts. There were some of those obnoxious goofy tourist attractions with the large shiny fiberglass animals promising the kids a good time inside.
My opinion abruptly changed when I glimpsed a gas station advertising $4.94 gas in a sea of $5.19 gas. The traffic was brutal, but I was able to scoot two lanes of traffic without hitting anyone to take advantage.
Traverse City has plenty of downtown parking garages. Our kayaks sitting on top of our tall cargo van didn’t care for anyone of them. We need 9’ of clearance and the parking garages were all 7’ 6”. We found a back street two blocks off the main drag with credit card parking meters. We swiped $3 for 2 hours and headed for the business district.
There are two franchise businesses that have invaded just about every quaint town in this area: Cherry Republic and Nifty Things. Cherry Republic, as the name implies, is all about cherries. This particular store, being the umpteenth Cherry Republic that we’ve walked by, finally sucked us in. They had lots of free samples: four different kinds of chocolate covered cherries; endless versions of cherry jams on crackers; and several varieties of cherry salsa. I was pleasantly surprised with the cherry salsa - it was way better than it sounded.
My sister, Donna, always buys us little morsels from these kind of specialty stores, so we returned the favor. We bought her some white chocolate covered cherries and a jar of cherry preserves. I hope they last long enough for us to give them to her. I was already eyeing them up this evening when scrounging for an evening snack.
Nifty Things sells colorful twirling and spinning metal lawn ornaments. We haven’t been pulled into a Nifty store yet, probably because they put so many examples out front.
Many rivers and rivulets bisect and trisect the town as they struggle to find an outlet to Grand Traverse Bay. I liked how the town incorporated them within the landscape. Some sprouted condos along their banks, especially those close enough to the bay outlets to allow boat traffic. Others were landscaped with grass, flowers, and trees. Most had inviting boardwalks along their banks. The fast moving water was clear and the riverbanks were clean.
I liked Traverse City. It was touristy but with taste. The waterfront was a vast green space. The harbor had plenty of good looking modest yachts, but none of those ostentatious mega-yachts that rub wealth in your face. These were the kind that made you daydream about selling off your house and living on one.
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Traverse City has that great old turn-of-the-century architecture. | |
I got the feeling that the world's headquarters for both Nifty Things and Cherry Republic were in Traverse City. | |
You're not fully dressed without a hat! | |
Now, that's a movie marque. | |
It takes a second to suss out the picture in these murals. The colorful patterns grab your eye an instant before you make out what the scene is - at least, that was my experience. | |
This giant old photo of Buster Keaton took up the side of a building. I don't know why the building owner put it up there, but I loved it. | |
Randy's Service - an original auto repair shop still in operation. | |
The rivers flowing through town were nicely kept up. | |
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When we used up our $3, we hopped in the van and headed up for Old Mission. Old Mission is both a tiny community and a lighthouse at the tip of a long narrow peninsula that separates the East Arm and the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay. Frankly it is the drive up the peninsula that is the main attraction. Although Highway 37 is a scenic road, we weaved along the eastern coast going up and the western side on the return. These lazy back roads would follow the water for 10 miles or so and then return to Highway 37. We’d just find the next looping back road to the water, and so on.
Old Mission consisted of a couple of houses, a replica log church, a cool-looking remote hotel, a park on the water, and a general store. The general store was a gem. It was a combination grocery store, antique shop, deli, and restaurant. The proprietor was a fun lady with a bright sunshine personality. She talked us into a whitefish burger and cherry pie.
Both were amazing and reasonably priced. The whitefish burger consisted of two large pieces of fish, not breaded or deep-fried, on a terrific sub sandwich sized bun - perfect for cutting in two to split. The slice of cherry pie was a full quarter of a very large pie. Again, perfect for splitting. The pie was perfection: flawless crust, thick gooey filling, and the ultimate balance of sweetness and tartness. We always compare pies with our standard “pies-2-die-4” from the Crystal Cafe in Iola, Wisconsin. This pie gives Crystal a run for their money. And did we take a photo of the world-class pie? Didn't think about it until after the last morsel went down our gullets.
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The amazing General Store in Old Mission near the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula. | |
Inside the General Store. (Above) The entry room. (Below) The seating area to eat. | |
This is both cherry and craft wine country. These aren't cherry trees, so I am assuming that this is a vineyard. | |
The Old Mission Country Inn. | |
The lighthouse was, well, a lighthouse. I can’t say why I like lighthouses. I guess it is imagining what life as a lighthouse keeper would have been like. So many lighthouses are in such remote places with extreme climates. Could I have done it? Doubt it. There was an original log cabin near the lighthouse that was moved to this property. The park service helped make it come alive by stocking it chock full of period furnishings. You could easily move in and immediately start housekeeping. I could see myself living in that nicely decked-out log house. | |
The Old Mission restored lighthouse. | |
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We took a different return route to camp. We drove along the eastern side of all the bays, lakes and rivers that make up this area. We drove through the likes of Rapid City, Alden, Clam River, and Bellaire. Clam River was nicely located at the mouth of the long and narrow Clam Lake. I don’t know why Clam River wasn’t named Clam Lake, but probably because Clam Lake looks so much like a river. Except for a marina, there wasn’t much there anyway.
Bellaire was listed as a QT (quaint town), so that was going to be our last destination before camp. Bellaire also has a city campground, the eerily named, Craven Campground, that I wanted to look at. It was $25 with electricity and water hookups. It was first come-first serve, a rarity these days.
The town was small but cute. The campground was odd. It was tiny but they packed in a zillion campsites. The park was clean but still looked kind of junky for some reason. I was most interested to see how crowded it was, being first come-first serve. It was nearly empty. Again, odd. I suspect that it will fill up for the weekend.
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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. | | | | |
