The Road to Interlochen
Well, we left South Haven, MI, early on a Monday morning headed north towards Interlochen, MI, to the home of one of my best friends from high school and for many years after (Pati) and her husband (Jim). Our paths haven’t crossed much lately, but every once in a blue moon, one of the other of us will just make contact out of nowhere.
After the gathering of some of my old high school friends in Florida that I mentioned in Part 1, I reached out and found that (Pati) was in the process of moving back to Michigan after living for some time in Lino Lakes, MN. I hate to say it but my first reaction was to ask – now why would you want to do that? To my surprise, (Pati) said it’s been a dream of hers for years.
After living down south for 36 years and Linda – all her life – moving to Michigan would be more like a nightmare, but (Pati) has been living in the northern territories for quite some time and a move to Michigan wouldn’t be that much of a change – climate wise.
So, here was another old friend who would be close by for a little high school reunion, or at least a visit on our northern trek.
From South Haven we traveled Hwy. 196 to Holland, MI, home of the Tulip Festival (what a surprise) and from there traveled up Hwy. 31 along the west side of Michigan going through many towns I knew from my youth – days spent family camping. Ludington, MI, was one of the favorite family destination, although a long trip in a car for a kid. In Ludington you can catch a ferry across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, WI.
A little further up the coast we went through Manistee, MI. These were all places that had a Michigan State Park and good fishing. Our family trips, at least in Michigan, went always to places where there could be good fishing. My father was a fishing nut.
Along the way we kept seeing signs for the Little River Casino Resort. Michigan has gone in a big way for casinos and the Manistee area is home of the Ottawa Indians. The tribes get to have the casinos, but then what part of Michigan wasn’t tribal territory at one time – before the white man came. I guess the Indians are getting their revenge now. Having never been in a casino I was a little curious, but had visions of losing all my gas money to get back to South Carolina – so we didn’t venture into any.
Further up the road we came to Crystal Lake (properly named) in the town of Benzonia, MI. I made a wrong turn looking for the downtown area which would have taken us around the lake, but again once I knew I was lost I turned around, plus it was getting time for lunch and we passed an interesting place called the Cherry HUT Restaurant. We were deep in cherry country, but what really got my attention was a sign at the restaurant which informed readers that on Friday nights the restaurant would be serving Cherry BBQ. Now that got my attention.
We called (Pati) to tell her we were close, but were going to stop at this place and eat lunch. She said, she and (Jim) had eaten there recently – she gave it the “interesting” description, and it looked that way, but a lot of cars were there so it had to be good. (Pati) and (Jim) had been working for the US Census – so they’ve been all over this area.
I must say, the cherry theme was interesting – all things cherry, and the food was OK, but I felt like we had fallen into a tourist trap. The food was over-priced for what it was. But, I really would have liked to try the cherry BBQ – just once to see what it would be like.
Interlochen
After lunch it wasn’t very long before we got to Interlochen and this time Google Maps was right on. (Pati) was out in the driveway washing her car. After a few hugs and introductions to (Jim) – we had never met, we moved a few things from the car into their home, did the tour, talked and eventually had dinner.
(Pati) and (Jim) also have bird feeders in their backyard and in front of their living room window, so there was a lot of bird activity here too. I never saw any squirrels and that might be due to their cat.
Later we drove into Interlochen to Bud’s Coffee, Ice Cream, and Food – for ice cream – what else? Bud’s was a nice big place where you could hang out. Did I mention that I always have black cherry ice cream. It’s the cherry thing. When I mentioned the Michigan/ice cream thing to (Pati) she said one night we’d have to go into Traverse City for a real ice cream treat, but unfortunately our travels in the area never took us there. They say to always leave something for the next visit. So, we’ll always have that ice cream treat in Traverse City.
Now, Interlochen might sound familiar to some of you in the art world. This small town in the woods is the location of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, a privately owned, 1,200 acre arts education institution. The Center draws young people from around the world to participate in intensive study of music, theater, dance, visual art, creative writing, and motion picture arts. Interlochen Center for the Arts is the umbrella organization for Interlochen Arts Camp (formerly the National Music Camp, founded 1928), Interlochen Arts Academy (founded 1962), Interlochen Public Radio (founded 1963), and the “Interlochen Presents” performing arts series where this summer performers like Sheryl Crow, The Moody Blues, Bela Fleck, The Oak Ridge Boys, Lyle Lovet, Taj Mahal, and David Sanborn were being offered, among opera, theatre and dance performances.
Now, (Pati) works at a Target store in Traverse City, from 4am to 8am, restocking shelves with merchandise before new shoppers arrive when the doors open at 8am. I never imagined she would be working at a Target, much less any retail establishment, but Target is my favorite store and stocking shelves early in the morning hours with no customers around – I can see that. Running a maple syrup farm – yes. Doing people’s star charts in a room full of old looking books and sky charts – yes. Working at Target took some getting used to at first, but then over the years I’ve done a lot of things I never imagined myself doing. Like writing a blog.
Over the years (Pati) and I have had some adventures. A year or two before I moved from Michigan to South Carolina I flew out to San Francisco to meet up with her to spend some time in California and then help drive her car across country back to Michigan. She had been staying in a place north of San Francisco in a small hippy community near Bodega Bay, CA, but was planning to return to Michigan. That was my first experience with the West Coast life-style and I found I was a Midwestern boy at heart. Later on, when I was living in North Charleston, SC, she and a friend came to visit me, for what I remembered as a few weeks and later learned was six months. She even had gotten a job at Charlestown Landing while she was here that I forgot. Again, just another instance where my memory had failed me of certain chapters of my life.
There are a lot of stories attached to these two instances, but there is no time for them here and some are best left in my fuzzy memory banks.
The next day, (Pati) planned to take us on a drive around the area – especially to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, but we started at a little rock shop we passed on the way to her house back on Hwy. 31. I wanted to get our son a Petoskey stone as a souvenir of our trip. Remember, he’s a degree carrying geologist.
I feel another lesson coming on.
A Petoskey stone is a rock and a fossil, often pebble-shaped, that is composed of a fossilized coral, Hexagonaria percarinata. The stones were formed as a result of glaciation, in which sheets of ice plucked stones from the bedrock, grinding off their rough edges and depositing them in the northwestern portion of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Petoskey stones are found in the Gravel Point Formation of the Traverse Group. They are fragments of a coral reef that was originally deposited during the Devonian period, about 350 million years ago (for those of you who believe the world is more than a few thousand years old). When dry, the stone resembles ordinary limestone but when wet or polished using lapidary techniques, the distinctive mottled pattern of the six-sided coral fossils emerges. It is sometimes made into decorative objects. Other forms of fossilized coral are also found in the same location. In 1965, it was named the state stone of Michigan. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)
While I spent time looking for the right Petoskey stone (meaning one we could afford) Linda looked at the other pretty gems they had – one of her favorite pastimes.
Next we stopped at a road side market and looked at more gems, some vintage CD’s or CD’s of vintage rock groups, and I got my first bag of Michigan cherries. We learned from (Pati) the night before that the cherry season came early this year and that we were at the tail end of getting local cherries, so this was a find and they didn’t have many left.
Between the market and the Dunes we stopped at a local chocolate shop that (Pati) stops at on her way to go swimming in Lake Michigan. As I stated earlier – we ate well our entire trip and the great thing was we didn’t gain weight – we both lost weight, so we were eating better than usual. Of course we were getting a lot of exercise too.
Once we got to Sleeping Bear Dunes we got on the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. As we entered (Pati) made a joke about the other cars entering the drive that these would be the people we would be seeing the sights with – how true that turned out.
OK – here’s the legend of Sleeping Bear Dunes. “Long ago, along the Wisconsin shoreline a mother bear and her two cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by a raging forest fire. The bears swam for many hours, but eventually the cubs tired and lagged behind. The mother bear reached the shore and climbed to the top of a high bluff to watch and wait for her cubs. Too tired to continue, the cubs drowned within sight of the shore. The Great Spirit Manitou created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs disappeared and then created a solitary dune to represent the faithful mother bear.”
The two bear cubs are South Manitou Island and North Manitou Island and the mother bear is at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
I had memories of coming here as a kid, but the dunes looked different and I later learned that the place I was thinking of was the dunes at Silver Lake near Saugatuck, MI. I was just getting my memories mixed up. What else is new about this trip.
Linda, Me, and my friend (Pati)
Either way these dunes were amazing as you’ll see in the pictures. At the dunes overlook I asked a fellow visitor to take a photo of (Pati), Linda and I – to help my memory in the future. Turns out it was a fellow Southerner from Georgia visiting a friend in Interlochen. Small world. After that little encounter we kept running into those same folks all day – even after we left the park and went into Glen Arbor, MI, for lunch. After the fourth time we just checked with each other to see what was next. I guess we broke the pattern when a gallery was across the street from where we ate a late lunch and I ventured in – knowing I probably shouldn’t have, but this was a step above the last gallery we went in.
The gallery presented a lot of nice work, but most of it was by artists from the Northwest Coast. I figured the owners must have moved to Michigan from that area bringing the artist’s works with them. I was glad to not see anyone else’s work I recognized.
(Pati) was willing to take us to other spots of interest, but I had to admit that the day had gotten the better of me and we headed home. We had done a lot of walking and driving.
The Tree Farm
Our stay in Interlochen would be short, so the next morning we got a little tour of their new maple syrup farm – a little smaller than the 50 + acres they had in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but still big to us. Plus, (Pati) would be coming to Higgins Lake, our next stop for the reunion on Saturday.
We learned from her that the year before was devastating to their maple syrup business as some worm had come to the area – like one of Moses’ plagues – eating all the leaves on the maple trees. The output of syrup depends on the crown of the tree and we could see that the trees were just beginning to come back, so there was some doubt as to what kind of crop they would have this next year. They didn’t get much sap out of the trees this year, but, I was lucky enough to buy one of the last bottles they had, but later sorry I didn’t buy a bigger bottle.
Just a week or so ago I finally made pancakes to try the syrup out and the 8 oz. bottle I got only lasted two days. I split the batch I cooked into two servings. It was goooooood. And, as Linda says – “would you like some pancakes to go with your syrup?” But, it’s a good thing I didn’t have more at this point as I would just end up eating too many pancakes. I’m trying to lose weight right now. You know the older you get the harder it is to carry that weight around and I’m enjoying the last year of my 50s.
So now I’m going to do some marketing work for my old friend. You can find a website for their business, Trees of Gold – Pure Maple Syrup, at this link. They’re still working on the site, but they may have a few bottles left and then you can check back to see how the harvest turned out after this next March. I told (Pati) that she needs to get working on her blog to show people the process – it will make buying the syrup even more interesting – seeing how it’s made and where it comes from.
How often do we get a view of the process involved in producing the things we eat? With one set of Grandparents who ran a dairy farm I got a complete picture of where most of our dairy products and meat comes from – other than off a grocery shelf.
It would have been nice to spend more time with (Pati) and (Jim), but they had other friends coming and we had the third link of our trip to make before the big reunion. So later that morning we headed south to the middle of the lower peninsula of Michigan to the Higgins Lake area to stay at the new home of my cousin (Joyce) and her husband (Rick). See you again in Part 3.
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