Suttons Bay

We left our friends, Kirbie and Brian Stephens, behind at their home in Saugatuck where we ”mooch-docked” for the past week. We had a wonderful time there and really enjoyed them taking us around their hometown.

We stopped for diesel on the drive – $5.79 / gallon!!! This is getting ridiculous! Almost $600 for a little over half a tank!

We drove about three hours north to stay in Suttons Bay at the Wild Cherry Resort. What a beautiful place with large sites situated around a lake. Check it out:

The only issue with the place was that our connectivity wasn’t good. AT&T, Verizon and Team Mobile all sucked! Imagine paying for all three services each month and not being able utilize any of them for the three days during our stay. At least we had our Dish Satellite system so that we could watch a little TV.

On the drive up and through Suttons Bay there was a little old movie theater where we saw that the new Jurassic Park was playing and on Tuesday at 1pm it was only a buck. After a very busy week in Saugatuck we thought that an afternoon movie might be relaxing.

When we arrived the next day there were a bunch of kids going into The Bay Theatre and someone dressed up as a Minion. After reading the marque we realized that the cheap showing was for the kiddos.

We decided to walk around the cute little town

and do some shopping. I ended up purchasing some new threads! We stopped for a quick bite to eat at a sub shop. We also spent a lot of time there as we were able to tap into their network. How did we ever live without 24/7 connectivity? When we were finished it was just before the real matinee for the Jurassic Park movie so we ended up going to the movies after all. Good deal as we only paid $8 each – check out the inside:

Too cute! Movie was ok – very predictable.

Afterwards we headed back to the Busse Bus and chatted with our next door neighbors. Very nice couple who just started full-timing.

Since we basically did nothing the previous day we had to jam a lot of activities. We started by driving over to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

We hiked up this dune:

so that we could see these views overlooking more dunes and Lake Michigan in the background:

We then drove the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive which took us through the woods and over the hills (dunes). Nice little drive! We stopped at this huge dune where you could go all the way down to the lake, but then you would have had to come all the way back up. Since the people we watched were on their hands and knees crawling up we decided to skip the workout.

Here’s the dune cycle:

Wondering why it is called Sleeping Bear? I was until we read this sign:

Bear was trying to find the mama bear:

We got some other good pictures as we finished the scenic drive:

As we started to head back we stopped in the town of Glen Arbor for lunch at the Cherry Public House. What great sandwiches that included cherries in some fashion or another.

I had the chicken cherry salad wrap and Katrina had lettuce wraps. Yummy! Bear also enjoyed sitting with us and keeping an eye on the black squirrels that seemed to be tormenting him. Check out this ”Lost Soles” totem pole:

Then we drove up to Leland and walked on the beach in search of Petosky rocks. We ended up finding some small ones.

As we learned that 350 million years ago this area was at the bottom of an ocean and that Petosky rocks are actually salt water coral formations! The hexagon patterns are so interesting.

We decided to head up to Northport to hunt for more stones but on the way we stopped at Green Bird Organic Cellars & Farms to taste some Michigan wines and ciders.

Since they didn’t have any reds (our favorite) we opted for a flight of ciders:

I was shocked that I really liked two of them! They would be good to have on a hot day. During our tasting we also enjoyed a charcuterie board with homemade goat cheeses with various flavorings. We liked one so much that we bought some to enjoy another day.

Getting back on the road we drove through Northport and stopped at a beach where Bear could play in the water. He just loves going after his water toy. I think he liked playing in fresh water instead of ingesting the salt down in Florida.

We headed back to the coach to get cleaned up and spend the evening in.

The next morning we were up and packing getting ready to meet up with some Myakkan friends (Ron and Ruthie Sherman) in the U.P. (That’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan).