Happy Anniversary to us!

A toast to us and 43 years!

Tunnel of Trees

In talking with our neighbors, we learned of the "Tunnel of Trees," a drive from Harbor Springs, Michigan, on the other side of the bay from us. The drive gets its name from the way the trees form a  canopy over the road along the lake shore. The drive goes on along the coast where it eventually reaches Mackinac City. We decided to take the drive after supper.

We had already driven over to Harbor Springs, so we knew that route. Then we continued on the scenic drive, the Tunnel of Trees. It is a lovely drive and a beautiful canopy. In the fall, this is a very popular drive from which to observe fall colors. I can see that would be beautiful. In the summer like now, however, you cannot see much of the lakefront due to that canopy, but it is a lovely drive nonetheless. There are many beautiful homes designed to capitalize on the views of the bay and the lake. And we saw this flock of wild turkeys in a yard right in front of a house!

When we got to Cross Village, we stopped at the legendary "Legs Inn." This establishment is known as "legs" because of the many stove legs used to decorate the roof line.  We had already eaten supper, but decided to stop for "dessert" and take in the atmosphere. The interior is very rustic with tree trunks and branches making up the framework and the furniture. It all seemed very clean and well done and we enjoyed our desert. It is a famous for Polish food and our waitress was a Polish gal here as a student. Afterwards, we walked out the back to view the sunset from the yard which was beautiful. Many flowers and beautiful landscaping of the yard with many benches to sit on and watch the sky. We were right on time to watch the sun set in the western sky, then we were off back to the camp, by a different route. It is about 30 miles back to Petosky. Next time we are here, we will plan a meal at "The Legs Inn."

Till next time. . .

Dale

Petosky, Michigan!

We camped Saturday night in Frederic, Michigan. Nice little camp, but their 30Amp electric had so little voltage that we were not able to run ANYTHING, and it was hot. Fortunately, it was supposed to cool down overnight, so we weren't too worried. We did take the girls with us for a ride in the evening so that we could all get cooled down.

Sunday we drove on up to Petosky. We got here early and way before check-in time, so stopped and parked at the casino in town. We fixed our lunch and then visited the slots for a while. They were not friendly, so we came back quickly and ended up taking a nap before we checked into the camp. Our campsite is in Magnus Park, a city park in Petosky, and a nice spot right on Little Traverse Bay. It is lovely and we see beautiful Lake Michigan right out our front and side windows. We got all set up in our site and for some reason, I just thought to check the site marker and we were in the WRONG site! Grrrrr. I have to say, that's never happened to us before. Don't get me wrong, we have done some stupid stuff, but that was a first. Oh well. . . guess I can cross that off my bucket list now. We pulled all the slides back in and pulled up the jacks and moved over one site to our correct location. It was a better site, so no problem.

Yesterday we drove back to Charlevoix, Michigan. We had been through there years ago and Terry had thought it looked like a cute little town, worthy of further exploration. So we parked and shopped the morning away before returning to camp. They have a drawbridge right in town and it goes up whenever a tall boat needs to get out onto the lake.
This morning we spent our time visiting the shops in downtown Petosky. It is a very pretty little town and is very quaint in its appearance. We enjoyed visiting the shops and talking with the proprietors. We are back at camp now. Dinner was put into the crock pot this morning, so we have dinner almost ready. It is sunny and warm outside with a cool breeze coming off the lake. Absolutely perfect. And we just saw this out our front window!

Till next time. . .

Dale

Change of Plans

No good intention goes unpunished. We were gathering things together to get the motorhome repacked. Whenever we stay over at the condo, we end up pilfering food/clothes out of the motorhome, so then we have to put everything back in. It is the one thing I hate about being here, but we have had a lot of service work done on Phaeton Place this summer and it was nice to have a place to stay. She's getting close to 100,000 miles and we had those services all done on her. Also had the tires rotated, a front end alignment and new front shocks. We had to take her to four different places to get that work all done, so that was hectic.

As we were getting ready to take off for a couple weeks, we got out our auxiliary brake that helps to stop the little truck we tow and it wouldn't work. Talk about frustration. . . every year we have had to send in this device and Terry was quite upset when he called them and talked to customer service. He found out how much it was going to cost and then called the manager for customer service and explained why he was so unhappy. After they talked, she gave him an RMA number and said they would be taking care of it completely. She sent him a mailing label via email. So we did get it sent in the next day. But that meant we were stuck sitting until that was fixed and arrived back to us. And of course, they got it fixed the next day, but sent it to our mail service in South Dakota instead of reading the paper Terry included about NOT shipping it there and calling for a shipping address.

It finally arrived on Thursday and we left that same day. Fortunately it worked right out of the box and has performed perfectly since. Hope that continues. We spent Thursday and Friday nights in Angola, Indiana. . .not too far away, but far enough to feel like we had gone somewhere! We are headed to Petosky, Michigan. We aren't sure what we are going to do there, but we have a campsite in the city park on the water, so maybe we will just sit and watch all the activity. We are supposed to be close enough to walk to town, so will probably do that. We will stay for a few days, then it's back south to attend a wedding near Kalamazoo. After that, we will spend a month at Elkhart Campground before heading south to the fall doctor appointments.

We have been looking at buying a car and Terry had a couple he was following on the internet. He called a dealer to see if it was still available. It was, so we got MinnieMee out of storage so we could take the dogs with us and headed for Lansing, Michigan. We ended up buying it and I got to drive it home. It's a fun car to drive and we love it. It's a 2011 Mazda Miata MX-5. 

Till next time. . .

Dale

Moving forward. . .

We hit a milestone the other day. We have been managing/owning five duplexes for the past ten years. We have worked hard to maintain nice apartments for our tenants and we have had good tenants for the most part. We have had many people approach us about buying our duplexes, but were never ready to sell. We decided this year that if the opportunity presented itself, we would sell one.  It would be one less duplex for us to care for and we could maybe cut down on our work in the summer when we come back to northern Indiana. We haven't traveled as much during the summer as we would like, so perhaps summers could now be spent differently. It seems with ten apartments, we always had one empty to renovate and rent during the summer.

We sold one last Friday. We are very happy with our buyers. They are landlords already and in the same neighborhood, neighbors in fact. Terry's parents had sold them a duplex years ago and they are ready to add to their business venture. When we went to the closing, the closer asked if the buyers or sellers wanted to go first. I looked at my friend/neighbor who is buying the property and said, "Can't we all go in together?" She said, "Well yes, I just didn't know if you wanted to." The best part is that they understand the rental business and I believe we leave our current tenant in good hands. In fact, these new owners have helped our manager with maintenance issues from time to time. After the closing we passed by the duplex and stopped and introduced our "former" tenant to the new landlord. All is well.

So now that we have that business behind us, we are going to take off for a few weeks. We feel we've earned a vacation. Hah! We did spent last week at Shipshewana. . . my favorite place up here. And we visited with Mom and Dad again yesterday. We are now ready to roll. . . don't know where, but we will roll.

Till next time. . .

Dale