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.