Vacation Log: Thursday and Friday

Thursday and Friday.

I woke up around 9am today.  When I looked outside, I saw that the lake was nearly glasslike.  That hasn’t happened since we arrived.  I’ve wanted to take a kayak out on the lake but the wind, waves, and chop always made me a little leery of doing so.  So I got ready to go out on the lake but by the time I was ready, the lake was back to it’s normal choppy, wavy self.  Bummer.  However, the good news is I finally got a signal from the wifi and was able to upload all the photos from Jennie and Troy’s wedding and reception.  That took a good while.  In the meantime, Bob got up and asked what we were going to do.  I suggested lunch at The Cherry Hut.  He agreed and off we went.

The Cherry Hut is in Beulah.  It’s a restaurant that seems to cater to tourists but locals like it too.  The food is simple comfort foods.  For instance, I had the hot turkey sandwich and Bob had the ham salad on pumpernickel.  They are famous for their cherry pie so of course I had a piece and it was divine.  We bought a few items to bring home and then we had to decide what we wanted to do the rest of the day.

I wanted to visit the local radio shack to see if they had any lens cleaning equipment.  They did so I bought it.  I spent a good 5 minutes working on cleaning my lens and the inner camera sensor.  It seems to be better now so will keep on that.

After the lens cleaning extravaganza, we drove to downtown Beulah which sits on the end of the Lake Crystal.  It was a warm but beautiful day.  Bob made friends with the locals while I poked around in the local shops.  We ate ice cream and drank iceless beverages under the town park gazebo.  Bob was feeling poorly so we came back to the cabin so he could lie down.  I took a book outside and read in my favorite place, the swing.  At one point, I was sitting minding my own business when a giant junebug flew by me and landed right on me.  Anyone watching would have cracked up laughing to see me flail and run with arms akimbo and I tried to rid myself of the vial beast.  I eventually used a nearby rake to pick it up and set it in the fire pit.  Gah!

After a time it got to look a bit like rain so I came in to make dinner.  Bob was up and decided he wanted to go to the store up the road.  He left while I cooked.  Dinner consisted of spaghetti and meatballs and sweet corn and it was good.  The only thing about being on vacation and making your own food is that there is really no use for leftovers.  I made a bit too much of the dinner so we had to throw the extra away.

After dinner, Bob went out to start a fire and I worked on the photos I’d taken for the past 2 days.  It took a couple of hours to sort and edit them all.  When I was done, I joined Bob by the fire and roasted a marshmallow or 2.  It started raining so we went in.  Just as we sat down, it started pouring rain.  We noted that this whole trip it has only ever rained or stormed at night while the days have been beautiful and sunny.  Now that’s a vacation!

As it rained, we watched the news and Miami Animal Police while we tried to decide what to do the next day.  The weathermen said to expect a hot and humid day so I suggested we go to a beach and just chill.  Bob said that sounded like something I could do and he would stay home.  He’s been really challenged by pain the past couple of days and pushing it doesn’t help.  So I said we’d see what the morning brought and we could decide then.  Then we went to bed.

Friday Bob was not feeling well at all so he gave me the OK to do some exploring on my own. 

When I woke up, it was still very cloudy from the rain we’d gotten overnight.  So I did some packing in an effort to be ready for leaving the next day.  I also made some breakfast of scrambled eggs and leftover potatoes.  It was pretty yummy.  After I cleaned up, I got dressed, kissed Bob goodbye and set off on my own adventure.

I first drove back to Glen Arbor.  Along the way I stopped several times to take pictures of the amazing scenery.  The dunes around Glen Lake are just so amazing that I could take pictures there every day and find new facets of the area.  Anyway, I reached Glen Arbor around lunch time and the town was bursting with visitors.  It hadn’t been quite so busy when we stopped there earlier in the week, but today it was hard to find a parking space.  Once procured, my first stop was an ATM.

Money in hand, I headed straight for Cherry Republic.  I was in search of their cherry BBQ sauce.  I grabbed that, some cherry tea for my friend at work, more cherry salsa and malted milk balls, and some cherry wine jelly.  Once I’d paid for all my treasures, I headed to the Cherry Republic beverage area.  I sampled some wines and bought 2.  I had intended to get some soda pop as well, but decided I’d purchased enough cherry flavored things.

After CR, I went across the street and bought some chocolate from The Grocer’s Daughter and a couple of prints from the art shop housing the chocolates.  The prints feature a cat named Lilly posing at various Benzie County landmarks.  Only in the photos, Lilly is a giant cat laying on a rooftop, playing with dune visitors, or checking out a nearby boat.  They are cute and I bought 2.

On my way out, I got a wrap for lunch at the Cherry Republic deli and a cherry lemonade (have I ever mentioned that cherry is my all-time favorite flavor/fruit?).  I drove back to Frankfort because the sun was coming out and I wanted to lie on a beach and relax.  Along the way, I stopped some more for more photos.  As I was driving, I caught the silhouettes of a group of 3 deer standing by the road.  I would have stopped to try and take their pictures if there hadn’t been cars behind me.  Sigh.  They were the first deer/wild life I’d seen this entire trip.

Once in Frankfort, I parked and walked to the beach. It was fairly populated but not overly so.  I laid out a towel, got out my book, and settled in.  It was heavenly.  I read on the beach in the sun for over 2 hours.  After that, I decided to go back to the cabin to see if Bob wanted to go out for fish for dinner.

Bob was just hanging out by the cabin when I got there.  He said he’d taken a nap, seen a bald eagle, and gathered kindling for that evening’s fire.  We chatted a bit and then he said he was hungry and did I want to go for fish.  I told him that’s why I was there and did he want to leave right then.  He did, so we did.

We went back to Frankfort to a place called Dinghy’s.  The line was out the door.  When I went in to put our names on the list, we were told it would be 45 minutes to an hour.  So we went back to the beach and hung out and talked until it was time to go back to the restaurant.  The fish was really good.  They had a choice of 2 kinds of fish…I can only remember the perch.  I liked the perch best but Bob liked the other best.  We each only ate about half our first basket and we were done.  We should have shared 1 but I don’t know if they even do that at an all-you-can-eat place.  The waitress was overly concerned about all the food we’d left behind but we reassured her that it was great, we just weren’t that hungry.  She wanted to box it up for us but we said we were leaving town the next day and didn’t really have time or place to store it.  She still took our sodas off the bill so we tipped her the difference in addition to the regular tip.

We left the restaurant and went back to the beach.  I wanted to take pictures of the sun setting over Lake Michigan.  It was still over an hour until sunset so I read while Bob explored.  The sunset was beautiful but just before hitting the horizon; it hit a bank of clouds just rolling in.  I was bummed that I wouldn’t be getting a photo of the sun sinking into Lake Michigan, but still, I got some good shots.

After we left the beach, we went back to the cabin.  Bob began building a fire and I began packing and getting ready for our departure the next morning.  After a while I went out to join Bob at the fire and roast my last marshmallows.  It was nice but buggy so I went back to the cabin to finish what packing I could do before bed. For some reason, though we were both tired, we could not make ourselves go to bed.  We watched the news to catch the weather and it looked like a big storm would be rolling through just about the time we planned on leaving.  Great!