Labor Day Weekend

It's so unlike me to something that is, for the most part, totally unplanned but I did just that this Labor Day weekend. Saturday morning Lori and took off with our friends Richard and Reta to destinations unknown. Well, they were sorta known but we just didn't know which destinations for sure!

Richard and Reta move here a few years ago from Kentucky and have not seen much of Michigan so we decided that we were going to Michigan and drive north and see where we landed. We decided to pack an over night bag as when we left we didn't know how far we'd go nor whether we'd come back or spend the night somewhere. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was perfect. We couldn't have picked a better weekend weather-wise if we'd tried.

Our first stop was South Haven, Michigan. We dined on our picnic lunch at a park near a channel that led into Lake Michigan. We munched away as boats of all sizes traversed the channel. Following lunch we wandered into town and browsed the shops and enjoyed a South Bend Chocolates coffee. It was a great kick off to our adventure.

We piled back into the car and decided that Sleeping Bear Dunes near Traverse City would be our next destination. About 3 hours later we arrived in Glen Arbor, a wonderful little town just outside Traverse City and right on the lake. We had dinner at this great restaurant that had a blue grass band playing on its patio. After dinner we walked down to the beach and skipped stones, well Richard skipped stones cuz none of the rest of us could, into Lake Michigan. We walked down the beach and back through town taking in the all the attributes of this quaint lakeside town.

Once back in the car we made our way to Sleeping Bear Dunes. And quite the dune it was. Tower Hill take a step back. We took one look at how high and how veritcal the dune was and decided the scenic drive was more to our liking. And it was a much faster way to get to the top, although it didn't do much to work off the ice cream we'd had after dinner. The views of the dunes and the lake were spectacular from the look out point at the top of the dune. Reta and Lori snapped some pictures with their digital cameras and back to the car we went.

By now it was getting dark so we decided to find a hotel and spend the night in Traverse City. Little did we know that every hotel in town seemed to be full. I remembered that my Choic Privileges Visa has a reservations number on it so I pulled it out and checked to see if there were any rooms available in Cadillac, the next closest town. Bingo! They found a hotel and I took the rooms. We got to the hotel and went our separate ways to CRASH!

Saturday morning we woke up to sunshine and a bright blue cloudless sky. We packed up the car and headed off to Ludington. We headed straight to the beach when we arrived. Reta and Lori were feverishly snapping pictures with their cameras as Richard and I made our way to the long pier leading out to a light house. We kept watching what appeard to be a huge kite in the sky. It was fairly windy and this "kite" was flying all over the place. As we made our way up on to the pier we found out that it wasn't a kite but a guy wind sailing on the other side. We stood their mesmorized by his abilites for several minutes. It was amazing how he could control the kite part and ski along the water flawlessly. There were times when the wind would blow hard enough that he'd be lifted several feet into the air and then come crashing back down into the water but never loosing his balance or falling down into the water. He would sail into the shore and then manuever the kite somehow so that he would go back out into the lake. Back and forth, back and forth. My arms and legs ached just watching him.

We found our way back to the car and had to make a crucial stop at the Starbucks that we passed on the way into Ludington. Latte's in hand we were on our way to Grand Haven for lunch.

As we entered Grand Haven we started seeing several chain restaurants that we could have lunch at but Reta thought it would be nice to have lunch at local place so we ventured down to the waterfront. At the waterfront we found a few places to eat along the channel so we parked and decided to check things out. We decided on a pizza and grinders place. While Richard and I waited for the food the girls went out to the boardwalk area to snag a table for us. During our weight for the sandwiches a huge freighter went down the channel on its way out into Lake Michigan. I believe that was the biggest boat I've ever seen in my life. We snarfed down lunch and made our way to the ice cream shoppe next door. Our addiction to ice cream took over and before you knew it we were all enjoying the specialty of the house, a cone filled with chocolate and peanut butter swirl. After strollling down the board walk and admiring the boats that were docked we decided it was time to hit the road once again.

The drive from Grand Haven to home seemed the longest leg of our entire journey. We were all getting pretty tired and the drone of the drive and the hot sun beating down into the car didn't help. We arrived back at our house around 4:15 pm and were wiped out. While Lori and I went to pick up our dog from the kennel, Richard and Reta stretched out in our living room to rest from the long drive.

We ended our weekend with dinner at the Mishawaka Brewing Company and ice cream at Ritters. Have you ever seen 4 people consume so much ice cream in your life. The longer we sat at Ritters the more tired each one of us began to look. We decided it was time to call it a weekend and piled into our separate cars and made our way to our homes.

What an awesome weekend. Great friends. Neverending laughter. God's outrageous landscape. What more could we have asked for!