Summertime no blues 3: Day Trip

The one day trip is a hit or miss.  As "well duh" as it sounds, it can go wrong or it can go right.  I might have to change that opening sentence before I publish this.

Just to warn you, this post contains no words of wisdom or morals.  It is strictly just a boring "trip story, this is where we went this is what happened" post.  Nothing more than a nice trip to a town I recommend.    

Last year we made a one day trip which was wrong wrong and bad.  All the way through it was just my daughters fighting with each other and me eating alone and neither of them much interested in anything we were doing except to yell at the other that they were wrong.  There wasnt anything nice about the one day trip last year. Not to mention that I made a wrong turn and had to go back a way I didnt know.  

Someone must have felt sorry for me last year because this year s one day trip was quite the opposite.  

In the past on my blogs I wasnt much for telling where I was or where we went.  I thought it could alienate some of my readers.  But slowly I dont get hung up on this as much.  So this time I will totally uncover all cities and even put in a map. 

We stay in the north of Michigan, but not in the upper peninsula.  Last year we drove to a rich little tourist town and a place where well off people can come up from other towns on Lake Michigan and park their boats, in the town of Charlevoix.  Its a nice town, but very small and mainly for richer people it seems who want to get up north with their boats.  Charlevoix has an excellent huge library I must say. It has an interesting history too and all that history is in the library.  Excellent library. 

This year I took it one step further and we went to the next town up the coast to

Petosky.  

Now Petosky is known for at least one thing and maybe people know it for two things.  The best thing about Petosky is it is named after the special stone which  can be found a lot around there. A petosky stone is a stone with fossils of some corral, the rugose corral.  It looks a bit like a corral print. Hexagon.   Here is the wikipedia link for more on the stone.  The stone is often polished and made into a special wearing stone like a diamond around your neck.  Yes, it is that beautiful.  

We walked out to the lighthouse (shown here) and had fun trying not to get sprayed by the big waves washing over the walkway to the lighthouse.  My older daughter took all the pictures and got the wettest.  

Whereas last year we had a fiasco of a luncheon where I was the only one eating while my daugthers watched (one wasnt hungry, and the other wanted to buy a submarine from a fast food restaurant down the street). This time we nearly had a great lunch in which two out of three of us had yummy meals. Unfortunately it was too spicy for my youngest daughter.  But the mixed berry drink was fantastic.  I will link the restaurant if it helps them at all get anyone in there from reading this. I was not paid anything whatsoever by them, they dont know who I am, but it was a great restaurant.  Get the berry drink.

On these trips I dont want to spare any money for anything (just about) and anything my daughters ask for I am prone to get.  So they each got a huge ice cream cone for dessert and they were both very happy about this.  Those cones are a meal in themselves.  

I wanted to walk a bit more on the streets up and down, but I was curtailed.  But that was ok.  However I was sad about missing the tour of what maybe a few people might know Petosky is also famous for.  The fact that Ernest Hemingway used to summer very near here on Walloon lake from the beginning of his life in 1900 to 1920.  There is a Hemingway walk each Fall in Petosky too in which the gatherers can retrace the steps of Hemingway including many stops in Petosky.   I wish my daughters had let me take the time to do this tour.  Sadly.... no.  

What capped the day off was going back down to the beach. The sun was out now and warmer and the wind and surf was not so strong.  So we walked along the beach looking for Petosky stones.  I was going to make a bad joke that I suspected the rocks for the beach were imported from California, but just then my daughter found a big petosky stone.  Then another.  I looked some also.  I walked farther and lay down on some grass.  My younger daughter did the same while my older daughter searched for petosky stones.  She found several in fact.  A couple small ones which is normal, but one sizable.  

We stayed on the beach for about an hour then drove back.  It was six pm,we had been there around 4 hours.  Not so long, but very nice.  A day trip out.  Very nice day.  That was what it was all about.  I was so thrilled with the day i veered off at a rest stop along Lake Michigan, parked and took another look at the lake.  Beautiful.  Beautiful.   

Take the time sometimes to recognize the small beautiful niceties in life.  Often they go unnoticed, because they are small, but when you do recognize them, you understand that they really do count.  

Back in 1984 when "Meat is Murder" came out, I bought it upon its release.  Then I kind of lost interest in the band. I didnt get anymore releases when they came out.   But lately I have been rediscovering the Smiths.  I have the best of cd, but I think I will start buying the records. I also listened to Strangeways here we come.  Their last albume before they split up.