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.