Wandering America: Crammed A Lot In

Yesterday was a busy, busy day. We began with a breakfast of waffles (made by the loving hands of Judy J.) and then we went for a walk on the bike trail. The bike trail, which is 27 miles long, runs along the Lake Michigan shoreline from Charlevoix to Harbor Springs and is the prettiest trail we’ve ever ridden. We used to ride it when we lived in Harbor Springs. Eventually the trail will be extended to start in Traverse City and end in Mackinaw City.

Here is another picture taken from our dining room table. We spent the rest of the morning reading on the beach. There were people swimming and roaming the beaches looking for Petoskey Stones.

Yesterday afternoon we drove back out to John and Della’s. Della is a graduate of Michigan State University Extension’s Master Gardening class. She has created several beautiful gardens around their five acre property in Levering.

John’s hobby is his birds. He has several cages of canaries throughout the house (didn’t take any pictures of the indoor birds). He, also, raises chickens for the eggs.

While we were walking about the property, Tippy (their border collie) kept us busy throwing her ball. John has one of those tennis ball throwers that sends the ball flying for miles. Tippy will have it back in short order, however, she will not give you the ball until she has rested herself up and is ready to run again. Good dawg, remarkable canine!!

We took the long way home by driving the scenic highway known as the Tunnel of Trees. It is a twenty mile winding road that runs from Cross Village to Harbor Springs following the shoreline of Little Traverse Bay (also known as M119).

While in Harbor Springs we did a drive by our old house that we had built in 1998 when I was Plant Manager at Control Engineering Company and Judy w*rked at Michigan State University Extension.

Here are some “drive by shots” from Wequetonsing which is part of Harbor Springs (pronounced We-Qwee-Tawn-Sing). These are summer homes for the rich and famous; most of them are not insulated for winter living. Nice to know how the other tenth lives!!!

And finally, a couple more pictures of the sunset taken from the “campground”. Just down the road from us in Petoskey is Sunset Park which fills up each evening with tourists gawking at the sun as it falls out of the sky into the lake. Sunset was at 8:59 PM last night.