Bay View and Castle Farms

This past weekend we pulled up stakes and moved the motorhome to Petoskey, MI for the weekend. It is about a 2 hour drive from Suttons Bay northward up the coast and takes you through the small city of Charlevoix.

Charlevoix sits between Lake Michigan and Lake Charlevoix. The city is one of those picturesque places that makes the local chamber of commerce's job easy. It looks great from any angle. The main street through town is lined with flowers, the businesses all face and partially surround the bay, and the recently updated city marina is close to the restaurants. To draw a better mental image, imagine the main street running north with the businesses and restaurants (several with outside seating) on the west side of the street. On the east side of the street the city has a narrow city park area with benches. Right at the park area is the marina, so when you are seated at an outside eatery you can gaze past the flowers to the boats that are only about 150 feet away. Very nice indeed.

So where are the pictures you may ask? Well, Charlevoix was in the middle of a celebration and street fair, so there was no parking available for anything the size of our motorhome. We hope to return to Charlevoix for pictures before we leave Michigan.

We arrived in Petoskey and set up shop in the Petoskey KOA (Kampgrounds of America). The campground was absolutely packed with campers and RVers. Each campsite was equipped with at least 8 kids and all their toys. Each evening the campers fired up their camp fires and created so much smoke we thought the campground would make the TV news as a wildfire. We were glad to stay only 3 nights at the KOA.

We did go to the adjacent community of Bay View, MI. Bay View has many old homes worthy of a stroll and viewing. We had a pleasent smoke free walk and aquired a few photo's. Here are some examples of the homes in the area.
We also made a trip to a place called Castle Farms.

Castle Farms is styled after midevel-style castles and although it is modernized, you can see the influence. There was a Fiber Arts Festival in progress at the facility which included all kinds of spinning related gear and supplies, a sheep herding dog demonstration, live entertainment, etc. The sheep herding dogs were something to see- those dogs are remarkable.

Castle Farms:



After our weekend trip to the Petosky area, we returned to Suttons Bay and the Wild Cherry resort.

We will now have to relax and recover from our KOA experience.

Old Mission Peninsula

Have I mentioned that this area is really a neat place? Well we continued our exploration by taking a trip to another nearby peninsula, the Old Mission Peninsula.

A few posts ago I provided some maps to pinpoint our location. If you were to go back to those maps you can locate the Old Mission Peninsula. The one map points to our location on the Leelanau Peninsula. Looking to the right (east) of the Leelanau Peninsula, and extending northward from Traverse City, is the Old Mission Peninsula.

The maritime influence is strong here just as it is throughout the region. There are small marinas all along the shoreline. Homeowners all along the shoreline have beautiful views out on the water and many have their own docks.

Old Mission Peninsula resembles the Leelanau Peninsula in the fact that the interior regions contain the cherry orchards as well as vineyards. Both peninsulas are similar in respect with a narrow coastal region that immediately turns into hills as you go inland.

We enjoyed the scenery so much, I didn't take pictures until we got to the end of the peninsula and found the lighthouse at the end of the road. An old log home was there also, so I did take photo's there.

Harvest Time

Harvest time has come to the Wild Cherry Resort. It involves an interesting process.

Some unusual equipment is used to get the cherries to drop off the tree. The harvesting machine reaches out with an arm that grabs the tree while some angled panels also extend under the tree. The operator then activates the "arms" which then shake the beegees out of the tree. The high speed shaking causes the cherries to come loose and fall onto the angled panels,and then roll to the bottom of the panels. At the bottom of the angled panels is a conveyor belt which transports the cherries up to a container that has water. The water is used to cushion the cherries falling into the container. A worker stands at the container and uses a racquet ball racquet to fish out leaves and twiggs that also fall off the tree. When the container is full a tractor takes the full container away and places a new container in place. Hopefully the following pictures will tell the tale better than my description.

The harvest period for the farmers is a very busy time indeed. It involves many hours in the orchards from daylight to midnight on some days.


I get tired just watching them.

45 North

Life at the 45th parallel is good. Actually we are just north of the 45th parallel in the Wild Cherry Resort. Our rv sits at exactly 45*00'29.08" North latitude and 85*40'59.5" West Longitude. If you punch that in Google Earth, you will be looking exactly at our rv site, however, it's an old picture taken prior to the construction of the rv resort being completed.

One thing that we noticed that differs considerably from South Florida is how light it is late in the evening. In the summer in South Florida daylight is gone by 9 pm. Not here at 45 North. It stays light until well after 10 pm, plus it starts to get light at 5 am! That makes for short nights. Oh well, that's the price you pay for being closer to the north pole than the equator in the summer.

As I write this at 8 pm on July 21st, it's 70 degrees, 50% humidity with a light breeze. It is so darned comfortable I can hardly stand it. But enough gloating, on to other things.

The hike that never was.

We decided to take a hike in the Leelanau State Park in the northern part of the peninsula. We went with our neighbors in the rv resort, Jim and Jacque Crehan, to the state park to take the 3 mile trail through the forest. We used up the last of Jim and Jacque's bug repellant prior to heading out into the woods. As soon as we stepped into the woods we were swarmed by mosquitos. We braved it for about 100 yards but the the little biters got worse, bug repellant not with standing. At one point I looked at Jacque and saw no less than 12 mosquitos on her back! We fled for safety and called it a day.

However, we then decide to explore the area by auto and made a stop at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse also within Leelanau State Park. The photo's tell the story.


Next we went to the village of Northport.

Northport, like most of the villages in the area, decorates the town with flowers. Since we could not excercise by hiking in the woods, we went to Barb's Bakery instead for pastries! Barb knows how to make them! Here are some of the flowers outside of the bakery.
Besides cherries, the area is becoming known for it's grapes. At last count there are 15 wineries in the region with 3 more scheduled to open in the next year or so. After the bakery stop, we traveled to two of the wineries for some wine tasting prior to going to the village of Leland, home of Fishtown. We had lunch in Fishtown and I acquired a couple more photo's for the blog.

After lunch we hit one more winery, the 45 North, which is across the road from the Wild Cherry Resort. They were free pourers with the wine. Shortly there after it was nap time.

So ended the hike that wasn't.

I'll end this post with a picture of a neat stone building; the local airport runway and terminal; and a 1936 Ford truck. By the way, if a couple of the pictures are not up to standard you can blame the dummy who took the photo's with the wrong setting on the camera.

Smart travel

Like everything else in America, bigger is better. Or is it?

For us Rvers the rv's have become quite large. This is partly due to our expectation of having all of the comforts of home wherever we travel. That's why we call it Rving not camping. I'll admit I like that. However, could we have all those comforts in a smaller and more efficient package?

In the case of one couple that showed up at the Wild Cherry Resort smaller is better.

They arrived in a 30 foot Trek motorhome, which is several feet shorter than the typical class A motorhome, and they were towing a trailer which carried their Smart Car and a scooter.

We and our neighbors went to take a look at the Smart car and were given a tour by the owners. George says that he typically gets 42 to 45 miles per gallon and can just about get 50 mpg if he drives carefully. He also said that he can get 90 mph out of it if he wants. I was impressed with the interior room of the car for the driver and passenger. There's also room behind the seats for groceries. So for an around town runabout and grocery getter, this may indeed be one of the cars for people without kids.

Fishtown and Sleeping Bear Dunes

A few miles from our camp is the small town of Leland which sits on the shore of Lake Michigan. The town relies heavily on tourism for income and has a downtown area primarily made up of shops. Typical of the towns in the area, flowers are used generously to enhance the visual appeal of the streets and buildings. Here are a couple of examples.



The original town of Leland was known as Fishtown. This indicates the original purpose of the area. Fishtown still exists within Leland and has shops as well as the fish docks. You can charter a fishing excursion right from Fishtown or you can just go to the store and get fish there. The smoked salmon is the best that we have ever tasted. They also have smoked trout and whitefish but we did not try them. There's another small but nice marina adjactent to Fishtown, just like most of the small towns on the peninsula. Here are a couple of photo's of Fishtown.

Our next adventure was a trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. Sleeping Bear Dunes is located near Glen Arbor and, of course, is along the Lake Michigan shoreline. It got it's name from the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians that thought the dune with trees on top looked like a bear. According to Indian lore the mother bear was on the shoreline looking for her two cubs, in the form of the North and South Manitou Islands, that are within sight of the dune.

There is an auto road, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, that passes by several points of interest. Point number 9 is a walking trail that takes you out on top of the dune and has great vistas of the lake. At observation areas along the trail, you are 450 feet above the water of Lake Michigan. One area actually has beach access if you want to descend the dune. The trip back up is tough so the Park Service discourages the adventure. As a matter of fact, upon our arrival at the dune, we were caught up in a small traffic jam due to traffic being held up while the Park Service rescued one such climber that could not make it back to the top. I've included a few photo's of the dune area, but they do not fully illustrate our distance above the water.

The last picture is a barn that is along the main highway in the area. We just thought it was neat so we include it here. There are quite a number of barns in the area but this is one of the best.

Leelanau Peninsula

First off, my apologies to those who placed comments on the blog. I'm still getting used to this blog thing and I guess I just didn't pick up on the comments. Linda spotted them today and called them to my attention. I will follow up with emails to a couple of you with a response.

We are in the Leelanau Peninsula northwest of Traverse City, Michigan. Specifically we are 3 miles northwest of Suttons Bay in the Wild Cherry RV Resort. I've included a couple of maps to pinpoint our location. Low tech but effective.

The Leelanau Peninsula is an orchard region that produces cherries and grapes on a large scale. Throughout the peninsula are miles and miles of orchards. Cherries are just coming into the harvest season.

The Wild Cherry Resort is actually on a working cherry farm. There are cherry orchards on two sides of the resort and are available for picking your own, for a nominal fee naturally. You can't get them any fresher than that! Here's a few photo's from around the campground.

As always click on the photo for a larger view. For those who enjoy closeup detail click on the dandelion picture.


The last picture is a boat we came across parked across from a marina. It's styled like a small tugboat but has sleeping quarters, a gally, dining area, shower/toilet area and can be equipped with air conditioning and other goodies. What a great way to explored the bays and lakes.