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.

National Cherry Festival

The National Cherry Festival is held annually in Traverse City to celebrate the areas hugh contribution to the cherry crop of the nation. The area supplies 25% of the nations sweet cherries and 75% of the tart cherries. When you drive around the area you certainly can believe it. Miles and miles of cherry trees.

The festival is a 9 day long celebration which includes many activities including pie eating contests, cherry pit spiting competition, live entertainment in the evenings, a beauty contest, and a car show to name just a few.

The crown jewel of the festival, and the real crowd magnet is the Festival Air Show. This year the headlining show was put on by the US Navy Blue Angles. Additional demonstrations by the prop driven group of Aeroshell Aerobats was also a crowd pleaser. Top that off with flights of an A10 Warthog and an F-15D Eagle and you have one awesome airshow. Here are the pictures.

If you have never attended one of these airshows featuring a high performance jet, you need to go to one some time. The show and sound are incredible. The tight turns that the F-15 can complete at hundreds of miles per hour are amazing. My favorite manuever has the F-15 pilot turning the jet straight up and lighting the afterburners and rocketing nearly out of sight!

The Blue Angles and the F-15 did a couple of speed runs past the crowd at about 600 mph. The crowd was impressed but I wonder how many know the same jets can actually go about 1200 mph! Now that I would like to see!