Last but Not Least....

Here's the REST of the story.....Where we ate in Traverse City, and some cultural stuff thrown in, too!

There are some AMAZING places to eat in Traverse City....and some too expensive for us to even think about...Like the Boathouse on the Bay Restaurant...Some of the family thought about going there, and we're sure it's excellent, but yikes---the prices! How about dinner for two--two 5 oz. Kobe beef filets, a one pound lobster with crab stuffing,  two salads, fingerling potatoes and asparagus--just 149.00!  What, no dessert at that price?????  Not for us....Here's the menu if anybody wants to take a look...
http://boathouseonwestbay.com/menu-2/dinner-menu/   There's always lunch.... but we didn't bite...heheheh.....

We ate one morning at Sparky's Diner, a little place in a strip mall and a VERY reasonably priced breakfast that was delicious! It better be, with Sparky's name on it!  A fun diner....reproduction cool '50's formica tables and chairs, cool record LP's on the walls, lots of locals eating here the morning we ate, so you know it's got to be good....Sparky bought a tee shirt with the diner advertised on the front....

We also ate a Peegeo's...a great snowmobile destination bar and grill in the winter and just as great in the summer--it had that type of atmosphere, VERY "up north"---dark wood throughout, noisy popular bar with the locals.....old looking...but GREAT pizza and sandwiches...We ate there twice.....

How about some ice cream? Eldo's absolutely favorite dessert of all....So we tried the Cherry Cone in downtown Traverse City. YUM! They have a terrific mission statement.

It didn't take much convincing to get Eldy to eat some ice cream, so we did! Sparky picked something similar to "Moose Tracks"---bits of Reese's peanut butter cups and fudge pieces. Lo and behold, they put actual peanut butter in the ice cream, fresh candy, and real fudge! And they mix it with two paddles! It was fantastic! (Yep, fantastically fattening, but we'll worry about that later, says E.)

At one point during the week we were going to try and eat at Apache Trout Grill which my nephew said was fabulous, but starting at 4:30 PM, the wait stretches out to over an hour and more, it's that popular. The family wasn't ready to eat that early so most of us never made it there....The family members who did said it was very very good! The atmosphere looked cool!

(OK, enough about food, Sparky..Everybody knows how much you like to eat out. What about the culture? asks E.)  Oh, yes...Sparky and her brother and family went to the Dennos Museum Center,  at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, where there was an Innuit exhibit this summer....It was interesting but small. It was a nice collection of art and sculpture from the Baffin Island area of Canada. Sparky REALLY enjoyed the neighboring exhibit in the room next door that was a Korean artist, Seungmo Park, who did portraits and landscapes entirely of mesh screening! WOW! VERY cool! Look at this.....

When you get up close, this is what you see (pictured on the left)...Back off, and this is what you see.

He cuts layer after layer of wire mesh and overlaps to create shadows and illusions....Here is a better description of how he does it...  http://www.dennosmuseum.org/exhibitions/current/wire-wrapped-park-mo.html.

There was a landscape where you could go behind the screens and become a part of the landscape, so Sparky did......It was a VERY interesting exhibit overall.....We really enjoyed it.....

We recommend going to the Old Mission Lighthouse at Mission Point, which we did. At the beach in front of the lighthouse, there are aquatic cairns--Usually you see those little rock piles that hikers make to point out directions of trails on land--only these were built in the water and there are probably more than a hundred of them sitting in the shallow waters. And of course, there's a small lighthouse there, too. We didn't explore that today, it was really busy there!

And we even got to play pickle ball one day with our friends, Suzette and Larry Kurfis, who we got to know back at Sun 'n' Fun last year....

It was a fantastic week with family. We are very blessed that everybody gets along well with everybody else, there's no family drama, and a great sense of humor abounds in this family.  We just really really enjoyed seeing everyone and talking to everyone. The campground was perfect for communicating with each other and keeping in touch while everyone was coming and going....Got to see lots of wildlife, kayak, eat well, laugh lots, and regain that family connection that is so hard to keep when everybody is spread out all over the country.....And if we needed space, we had that, too. The Windjammer on the Lake is a great setting at Spider Lake, Traverse City, for a family reunion if you like a more "campground" atmosphere and not so much a fancy resort type of place. No place for RV's, just cabin accommodations. The managers of the campground, Keith and Theresa, were absolutely wonderful.....A big thank you to them for all they did for us. We recommend this place to anyone looking for a wonderful, campground atmosphere, which was a little further away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Traverse City (it was about a 15 mine drive from the campground). Loons calling out every night and morning, a peaceful lake, and a shady campground for relaxing and connecting with family. Life doesn't get any better than that....except to be retired and healthy, maybe!  :-)

Bye for now.......