A discombobulated week

I drove straight to Ann Arbor from Petoskey on Monday except for a quick McDonald's break in Birch Run. I had to see my beautiful little grandbaby on my way home. I'm used to seeing her every Wednesday and Friday and I think this was about the longest I've gone without seeing her since we started watching her.

Then on Tuesday I had to meet Brian, one of the photographers for the Monroe Evening News, our local paper. They are doing an article about me for their special publication, "Thrive", which is targeted at over 50's which is appropriate since I'll be 60 in September. It's about how I'm doing all the counties in Michigan as a training motivation for the 3 day. I hope it turns out well. I trust the editor. Brian was really nice too. I'm pretty snoopy so I had just about interviewed him by the time we were done.

I was having an event on Wednesday night at Splash Universe in Dundee. It's called Quartermania and they are pretty fun. I'm a procrastinator so I still had some baskets to get together and headed up to Ann Arbor. I did a bag with Starbucks cups and a gift card. Also got some candles at Swan Creek. I was all over that day.

Wednesday was the day of the event. I made the rest of the money I needed to walk but obviously if I can make more then it's all good. More money to try to find a cure for breast cancer is a great thing!!!!!

Today I went down to Toledo and tried to find some cool walking pants. Why are women's workout shorts so short???? I seriously doubt that anyone wants to see my dimply 59 year old legs hanging out. Although I have a feeling by the 2nd hour of the walk I won't care what I look like. I ended up buying some socks. I still have to get a sleeping bag and a pad. I have lots to get together in the next two weeks.

Then the cool thing. I have driven by the Wildwood Preserve in Sylvania Ohio countless times and always wanted to stop. Never did until today. It is a very cool place with a neat wooden walkway and a covered bridge over the Ottawa River. And on the edge of the park there is a rail trail called University Park Hike Bike Trail. So I only walked a couple of miles today but intend to go back in the next two weeks.

That's it. I got home and melted in the heat for a while and when it cooled off a little walked Tonks the dog. Tomorrow morning I have to get up before the sun and do an 18 mile training walk. Oh boy!!!!

Emmet and Charlevoix Counties

After doing 15 miles on Saturday I thought I'd go a little easy on myself and only do 10 miles on Sunday. Since our boat was docked in Petoskey I decided to go up the rail trail to Bayview which is a beautiful village just north of Petoskey across 31 from Lake Michigan.

Bayview is a community founded by the United Methodist Church back in 1875. It is a summer community called a Chautauqua and has 450 beautiful cottages and 30 beautiful public buildings. I walked through part of the village. The houses are beautiful with wonderful landscaping. I didn't take many pictures because it seemed invasive to me.

This house was on 31 so I figured it was fair game. Look at all those flowers!!!

I think this is a boarding house. It was on the public part of the Chautauqua.

I walked back to the boat and Emmet County was done. I whined for a while and was really mean to Wes because I was tired out. I didn't want to do Charlevoix County and settled down to take a nap. Wes took a walk to let me chill my attitude out a little. He came back with chocolate which made me happy and nice again. I took some Tylenol and decided that maybe I could do Charlevoix.

Later in the afternoon we headed south again on 31. We parked downtown and spent a few minutes shopping for items for my raffle basket for Quartermania that happens on Wednesday. Then we started walking down to the pier. We walked along the lake and then headed to Boulder Park.

If you ever go to Charlevoix you have to go see the hobbit houses. They're back along the street by Lake Michigan and look like mushrooms that grew out of the ground. They were built in the 30's by Earl Young who was a local insurance agent and realtor. He used mainly stone on these charming houses.

If I won the lottery I would buy one of these houses if they ever went up for sale. They are so cute!

A stone fence at one of the houses. We wandered around Boulder Park for a while and then headed back up the street to downtown. As we walked by Lake Charlevoix the ferry from Beaver Island was coming in.

We still had to get about a mile and a half so we walked down the street that parallels Lake Charlevoix. There were impressive old houses high up on the hill overlooking the lake. We walked past the fancy schmancy Belvedere Club and Wikipedia says the members are extremely wealthy and are mostly from the Midwest and South. The people we encountered on the sidewalk were nicer than the dude in Frankfort.

This house is huge and beautiful but I like the Hobbit Houses better.

Wes made me wait for ice cream until we were all done with the walk. I had a yummy peach ice cream waffle cone from Kilwin's. I don't know why I'm not losing weight!!! I sound terrible with my chocolate and ice cream.

Today I didn't do any counties on my way home. I wanted to get home and see my kids and dog and my grandbaby. I still have 11 counties to go but I'm going to do them after the walk. I will try to find interesting places to walk around here though so I'll still be blogging.

Benzie, Leelanau and Grand Traverse

We set off early on Saturday down to Benzie County. Everything I read about the Betsie Valley Trail said it was beautiful and an overall great trail. We headed into Beulah and the trail goes right through downtown. We got a coffee first at a great little eatery, The Phoenix Cafe. The service was excellent and friendly. Wes got his computer and took advantage of their Wifi as I walked for a while on the trail.

It's one of those deals though where there's the trail and it's great but there is no shade. I did 2.5 on the trail and then went back to the cafe. Wes bought me a really cool hat that shades me a little bit at a little shop there.

I thought this was a neat house and it was right across from Crystal Lake. Great location!

Actually this is right across from the house above. Their property includes the lakefront.

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The old railroad station which is next to the rail trail (duh).

We decided to go over to Frankfort to get the rest of my 5 miles. Frankfort is a really pretty city on Lake Michigan. It used to be the terminus of the Ann Arbor Railroad. There are some pretty impressive houses there. Also a beautiful beach and a nice long pier.

Ducks are pretty cool, especially the babies.

Wes taking a picture of the harbor light or whatever this is technically called.

Here are some of those impressive houses.

Nice landscaping along the path to the beach. Benzie was done at the end of our walk on the pier and around the neighborhoods. Nice town, people a little snooty but I guess I would be too if I had people gaping at me as I tried to enjoy my life. Whatever....

Then we went up to Empire to start Leelanau County. I love Leelanau and one of my favorite places on earth is the Grand Traverse lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula. But we didn't have time to go up that far so we started in Empire which is in the Sleeping Bear Dune National Lakeshore Park. We ate at a restaurant there which was pretty good and I started walking. Got a couple miles and then headed over to the Tart Trail (Traverse Area Recreational Trail) that goes from Traverse City to Sutton's Bay. It was so excellent and shady and beautiful. And I thanked God profusely that they also had a porta potty a little ways down the trail.

A couple of pictures from this trail. Look at how clean this water is!!! It's just a beautiful area and a beautiful pathway.

By the time I got Leelanau done it was about 7:00 and I still wanted to finish Grand Traverse which is right there over the county line. So I basically got out of the car and walked about 2.2 miles east and then walked back and met Wes. He walked with me the last little bit. It was a nice walk along the bay and there were some pretty cool boats out there like this tall ship.

The sun was setting by the time I was done. I had done 15 miles and my feet felt like it but it was very gratifying to have completed 3 counties. Yay!!!! We got back to Petoskey at 12:30 AM.

Cheboygan and Antrim Counties

I left St. Ignace early in the morning and headed back over the Mackinac Bridge. There was some work being done on it which made it a little frightful for me. I had to drive over the dreaded grates. I'm the sort of person who won't walk over grates on sidewalks so it was no fun. But, of course, I eventually got over and to Mackinaw City.

The first thing I look for when I'm going to walk in a city is how far out are their sidewalks. It's a pretty good indicator to me about how committed they are to providing ways to get out and walk or run. Mackinaw City's go WAY out. I parked by the park which is right by Fort Michilimackinac and started walking. It was very early so it was still a little cool. The lake was beautiful. My legs felt pretty good after just walking about 8 miles the day before.

I wish I could remember who this is a statue of. I think it was a white woman who worked at an Indian mission???? I thought it was a pretty neat carving.

There are sidewalks all the way along the lake and through town. This is the Old Mackinac Point Light.

I told Wes I was going to try to take a picture of the sailboat as he traveled under the bridge. But from my vantage point I couldn't tell which sailboat was him. And I think I missed him by about a half hour anyhow. It really is a tremendous sight.

It's weird but I kind of like Mackinaw City better than the island. Don't know why. I was just glad that Cheboygan County was done.

I decided to drive all the way down to Antrim County and see if I could finish that before I had to meet Wes (hopefully) at Petoskey. We kind of kept our fingers crossed about where he'd end up since he hadn't made reservations but it's pretty easy to get docks this year with the gas prices being so high. And I keep my fingers crossed that he won't run into any trouble.

Grass River Natural Area is west of Mancelona in Antrim County. It has a wonderful boardwalk trail through wetlands with signs along the way explaining what you're seeing. The trail goes down to the Grass River at one point.

The water was crystal clear. All kinds of wildlife was flitting and swooping about. The people at the visitor center said that I didn't need to worry about bear that they hadn't seen any scat for about 8 years. And I didn't need to worry about the coyotes or bobcats since they are mostly nocturnal. Okay....Funny that I don't even worry about snakes and I'm really pretty scared of them. The worst thing about it was the flies....lord they're nasty!!!

I wasn't sure why anyone would want to sit on this bench.

The trails were really nice but not very long and the flies were driving me away so I still had about 2.5 miles to get and there weren't really any towns to walk around in. So I started driving up 31 and saw Barnes County Park which was over on Lake Michigan. They had some excellent hiking trails so I hoofed it around there until I was done.

These steps went down to the swimming beach. They have camping at this park. It was pretty nice!

With Antrim County done I headed up to the nearest McDonald's to get on the internet and that's where Wes messaged me that he'd got a slip in Petoskey. It took me a while to get through Charlevoix as they had their Venetian Festival going on right on Lake Charlevoix but I finally made it through.

Delta and Schoolcraft Counties

Thursday morning...I was excited. We were going to get the rest of my 5 miles at Fayette Historic State Park. The town of Fayette was built to manufacture charcoal pig iron back inthe 1800's. They chopped down all the trees to get charcoal for the kilns and used the plentiful limestone in the area to purify the iron. Now it's a living history museum. There is a big old hotel, they've reconstructed a worker's house, there are some of the houses of the upper class of the town on display. Very impressive and interesting!

This is looking at Big Bay du Noc which is named after the Indian tribe that had been living in the area.

Here is the building where the furnace was located. You can still see the remnants of the slag in the bottom of the stack.

This is one of the kilns where they made charcoal.

There was a wonderful hiking path that run up along the hill behind the city. The views were amazing. That water is so blue....

Another one of those woodpeckered trees.

Delta County was done!

The last county that we were going to get done was Schoolcraft. I had been planning to go to Seney National Wildlife Refuge but changed my mind because there is no shade there and would have been miserable. Everything they say about the flies in the Upper Peninsula is so true. They are horrible and laugh at bug spray with their little mouths. We were going to do Manistique instead.

The first thing we did was eat. Cedar Street Cafe was perfect. It was located in an old building and managed to maintain it's historic character but had a modern classy looking dining space.

Once I had eaten my club sandwich (yum) I headed out toward the trail.

This was another lakeside town that does a good job of making the shore available to everyone. The trail was great. It had all the important things (in my opinion): They had restrooms, signs to explain about history and the wildlife, and water. I did about half my miles and then had to walk around town to get almost done. It was one of those, "I'm sick of this" moments and I'm afraid Wes got the brunt of my frustration.

I thought this was a pretty cool looking church.

This looks like an arts and crafts style house. Nice porch!

I had .36 to complete so we drove out of town and stopped at a roadside park and I got it done. That was all I achieved yesterday. We made it back to St. Ignace and I spent a while doing our stinky, sweaty laundry. This morning I went to Mackinaw City and Wes set off for Petoskey.

Gogebic and Escanaba Counties Meltdown Day

I am behind on this blog. Basically I walk most of the day and then at night I don't have enough time to get the blog done. It stays light really late up here. I'm working on getting caught up!

One thing I didn't mention about our motel in Ontonagon was that there were two stuffed bears in the lobby area. It really creeped me out. One was up on his hind legs. The place had a nice sunset but the decor was not my cup of tea.

On Wednesday we left Ontonagon early and headed down 45 toward Watersmeet. Breakfast was pretty good, we stopped at a little place called Char's Cafe in Bruce Crossing. We made it down to Watersmeet and it definitely didn't have a lot going on. There was a trail that I think was actually a snowmobile trail but I walked on it. I was scared of bears but didn't see any. That is getting kind of tiresome that I'm so worried about bears. I need to get over it. Anyhow, it was early but still very hot already and I was proud of myself for getting the 5 miles done in Gogebic County.

I don't know what happened with this picture. This is the entrance to the trail in Watersmeet.

Then we drove to Crystal Falls which is the county seat of Iron County. It was a nice looking town built on a big hill. The county building was impressive. We found a small park with a boardwalk and Wes dropped me off and was going to try to find a place to check his email. Turned out the boardwalk wasn't very long and I was going to have to walk over the bridge and on the sidewalks up the hill to town. I didn't want to. It was hot, I was sticky, the hill was too high, couldn't do it. In the middle of my meltdown I talked to my daughter and she kind of reinforced that I didn't have to if I didn't want to. The thing was it was going to mess up my schedule because we had to be back at St. Ignace by Thursday night so I decided to skip 3 counties and drive directly to Escanaba since any rational person wouldn't be putting themself through walking in that heat. I think it was over 100 when you combined the humidity. So that's what we did. We went to Escanaba.

I loved Escanaba!!! We got a motel room and then went downtown which is right next to Lake Michigan. They had beautiful trails and beaches.

The two pictures above are along the walkway in the park. We sat on a shady quiet bench and I regrouped!

This is obviously the lighthouse. Escanaba was a very easy city to walk in with another park next to this lighthouse where they have kiosks and signs with explanations of the city's history. The downtown was pretty vibrant. Escanaba has the Upper Peninsula's State Fair which would be the only one now in Michigan since the one in Detroit isn't happening anymore.

Finally that day was over!!! The next day we finished up Delta County at Fayette Historic State Park which will be next blog.

I still have to do Iron, Dickinson and Menominee Counties in the Upper Peninsula. I was thinking that maybe I could take the Badger-the ferry from Ludington to Manitowoc this fall when it cools off.

Houghton, Keweenaw, Ontonagon

Late Monday afternoon we chugged into Houghton, crossed the bridge to Hancock and got ourselves a motel room. Immediately I collapsed on the bed because I was dang tired! After a short while I was ready to take on the world, showered and we started hoofing it back over to Houghton.

Houghton is pretty impressive with wonderful old stone buildings and lots of restaurants and things to do. It's the home of Michigan Tech so it seems to have a young attitude. We ate at the Ambassador Restaurant which has the original back bar from 100 years ago. We sat at the back window overlooking the Portage River (or canal). Then we headed back to the motel and prepared to face another day of adventuring.

The next day I still had 4 miles to get done in Houghton County so I got up early and walked around the neighborhood in Hancock. That city has seen better days but some of the houses are pretty impressive.

This house has good bones and would be a knockout if renovated. There are lots of houses like this and I'm guessing it's a situation like Detroit. They have more houses than people to fill them.

Speaking of which: Our next stop was Calumet. The whole city is a Historic District and its heyday was back when the copper mines were operating. Again there are impressive stone buildings. There are lots of churches and I'm guessing that's because there were so many different ethnic groups living there.

An abandoned house in Calumet. Actually I bet a lot of these buildings will be worked on but maybe there is red tape with it being a historical district.

In 1913 the miners went on strike. A famous tragedy (or crime) occurred during a children's Christmas party at Italian Hall. To this day it isn't known exactly who yelled "Fire" but it caused a panic. 73 people, mostly children, suffocated to death. This is the memorial on Elm Street.

One of those beautiful churches.

While I was walking around town getting the last of my five miles in Wes was sitting at this cafe reading "The Stand". He keeps telling me about what part he's at and I keep telling him that I don't remember it that I read it about 15 years ago. Finally I completed that county and we were on our way up to Keweenaw.

We went all the way up to Copper Harbor and went to Fort Wilkins State Park and wandered around there for a while. It was built to guard the copper interests. Right on the grounds there is a big hole where they first found copper but it never yielded much. There are neat old barracks and it's really informative with explanations of what the buildings were used for then and how they were restored or rebuilt. We also walked a trail in the park that went along Lake Superior.

I still needed more miles so we walked up a very long gravel road which seemed to take forever. Finally we got done then went to eat at a restaurant down the street. They had a very bossy menu and said that if you get a pasty you could get gravy and coleslaw but don't ask for them if you aren't going to eat it. I thought that was funny....

This is the lighthouse at Copper Harbor.

We took Brockway Mountain Drive out of town. This is the view from on top of the "mountain". It is supposed to be one of the most scenic drives in Michigan and I agree!! I was white knuckling it for most of the drive.

Then we drove all the way down the Keweenaw Peninsula and went to Ontonagon. The town itself wasn't much although it is on Lake Superior and has the Ontonagon River running through it. I walked across the bridge and back into town but I was so hot I couldn't stand it. We decided to find a motel in the area. There were some on what used to be the main highway out of town and we got a nice room at an old motel that was right on Lake Superior. I was finishing up my miles that night and realized that the sun had come out. It had been really hazy all day because there was a forest fire in Ontario and the smoke was drifting over to the Keweenaw. So I figured the sunset would be pretty great and as you can see below...it was.

Alger, Marquette and Baraga Counties

Sunday we ended up in Munising in the late afternoon and checked in to the Munising Motel which was right downtown. After relaxing for a bit we headed out to the local pizza place. There were a lot of stunned looking people there since it was so very hot. Especially considering that here we all were in the Upper Freaking Peninsula. We ate and then I headed out for a walk to get some miles in. I met up with Wes at the docks and then headed back to the motel. Later on there was a thunderstorm that didn't seem to make much of a difference to the weather.

This morning I woke up bright and early to get the rest of the miles in. This was the sunrise over the parking lot.

There is a really nice veterans memorial on the waterfront. Very sobering to think how much these men and women were loved in their hometown.

I was thinking that this area would be kind of a drag to live in if you were a teenager. Then I found out where the high school is and it kind of changed my mind. The high school is right on Lake Superior and this is what the kids get to look at from their classroom windows.

While walking I found this coffee shop so after cleaning up Wes and I stopped here for breakfast. Then we headed out for the next county...Marquette.

Marquette was so impressive and beautiful. There is a really nice path along the waterfront. Even though they still have industry on the river, they manage to incorporate it with places for people to enjoy the scenery and to get exercise.

The sky was beautiful.

The path was beautifully landscaped with wildflowers and bridges over babbling brooks.

As I got back downtown I got a kick out of this banner that was on the back of one of the buildings.

I managed to get surprised by a quick but heavy shower. I was out by a little park/playground and took shelter under the eaves of the restrooms. The view was of one of those islands that have been taken over by gulls. It was a loud and messy place!

This was a freighter out on the lake by Marquette.

While I was walking Wes got new front tires for my car since we discovered they were almost bald!!! He said he had a surprise for me and it turned out to be that Marquette has a Starbucks. So we had to stop and I had to get a mocha and a blueberry scone. Yummm!!!

We went on to Baraga County which seemed to take forever and the drivers on the road are so crazy. But we got to L'Anse and they have a pretty good path on Keweenaw Bay. I got about 2 miles done there. We went over to Baraga State Park which was only a camping facility but we walked a lap around it and there was also a hiking path that was 3/4 mile long. Then I walked along the road at the bottom of the bay where the locals just park their cars and use the beach. I was finally done. Those middle of the day counties just about kill me!!! Especially when it's 90 degrees.

This is the bay by L'Anse.

We then came up to Houghton/Hancock. To be continued again>>>