The Traveling Michigander

So let’s wrap up this Traverse City snowshoe trip, shall we? You can see the first two parts here and here.

I didn’t rise too early on Sunday morning, sleeping in until 7:00. (That’s about as late as I can sleep.) I was ready in plenty of time for the Fairfield Inn breakfast bar. There was a decent selection, and I went with a hard-boiled egg, breakfast sandwich, waffle, and orange juice. Quite a bit more than I normally eat, but I had some snowshoeing ahead.

Fairfield Inn, Traverse City

I left the hotel around 9:00 and went to Peninsula Park on the tip of Old Mission Peninsula. Traffic was incredibly light and the roads were clear of snow – I made excellent time to the park.
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Instead of heading north from the parking lot to the water like I normally do, I went south, across the road and into the woods. Though I had snowshoes, I really didn’t need them – between a relative lack of snow and a well-packed trail, it was easy going. I stomped off the trail now and then just because I could.

Peninsula Park, Old Mission Peninsula

I followed the trail east to the water, then back into the woods, exiting the forest a final time to walk on the ice-covered bay. Surprisingly, there was one other person out on the ice, so I wasn’t the only crazy one.

Peninsula Park, Old Mission Peninsula

I wasn’t done with Peninsula Park, but I wanted to examine a different side of the trails, one that would have taken me too long to reach on foot. So I checked my handy Trail Atlas of Michigan, a book no hiker / biker / snowshoer should be without, and found an entrance farther south. The terrain was more fields than forest, still an easy hike. There was no one around, though, and that was what I was looking for. And from the looks of the trail, only one person had been there within the last couple of days. I’ll be trying the “hidden” entrance again.

On my way back to Traverse City, I stopped at the Old Mission, a recreation of the original Christian mission on the peninsula.

Old Mission, Old Mission Peninsula

Lunchtime had arrived and I met a friend from my days at Babbage’s (Babbage’s is dead, long live Babbage’s) at The Blue Tractor. This was my second visit to TBT, and I was just as impressed the second time as I was the first. I had an excellent Black, Blue, and Bacon burger, the most important ‘B’ being Bacon. Not a quiet spot – both visits have involved small, loud children – but great food.

After my meal, I headed an hour or so south to Cadillac for my final trail of the trip, William Mitchell State Park. I was not impressed by the trails – it was just a simple loop around a marsh connected to the parking lots by spoke trails. And there was the constant noise of traffic on nearby M115. But, it was a new trail, my third new one of the year, and that was the reason for my stop.

Mitchell State Park, Cadillac

My trip over, I headed home to a freshly baked heart-shaped cookie with chocolate frosting.

My snowshoeing at Ludington State Park concluded, I departed south. After a brief stop in Ludington to take a few pictures of two more lighthouses, I departed for parts north – Traverse City. Like my trip from Lansing to Ludington, traffic was very light. US 10 and US 37 were nearly empty in parts, and I didn’t encounter any significant traffic until just south of TC.

Lighthouse, Ludington

My hotel for this trip was the Fairfield Inn on US 31, just south of South Airport Road. I was given a room with a king bed with a beautiful view of a Cracker Barrel. The room was simple, and also included a refrigerator and microwave for those who bring your own food or have leftovers from the many great restaurants in town.

Fairfield Inn, Traverse City

I made the short trip to the Traverse City Commons for a very short hike on the trails through the hills above Traverse City. There are several different well-marked trails that wind through the trees and hills behind the old Traverse City State Hospital. It was late in the afternoon, and I only saw one other person using the trails, so it was a thankfully quiet walk.

I had read good reviews on the House of Doggs, so that was my dinner spot. They serve many different kinds of two hot dogs, and the hard part was limiting it to two. I first tried the Jazz dog, which had banana peppers, jalapenos, hot sauce, chili, and other wonderful stuff. And, as you can guess, it had some bite. My second dog was the Honky Tonk, covered with cheese and bacon, beautiful in its simplicity. And it had bacon, so I couldn’t pass it up.

House of Doggs, Traverse City

What visit to Traverse City would be complete without seeing a giant viking head made out of snow?

Snow figure, Traverse City

After a short walk around town and by the bay, I stopped by Horizon’s on Front Street to buy a few children’s books – they have one of the best selections I’ve seen anywhere. And my daughter really enjoyed one of them I bought for her, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.

Time for my final stop of the evening, Right Brain Brewery. Located in the Warehouse District, this was a new bar for me. I’m a fan of microbrews, and this one had some unique offerings. For this trip, I had a ginger-flavored IPA and a chocolate-orange stout. No Budweiser or Miller Lite there. Their menu changes constantly, so the next time I visit, most of the beers on the menu will probably be gone.

Right Brain Brewery, Traverse City

Back to the hotel room for a little relaxation after a hard day on the trails, and to dry out my boots and gloves. I had a thankfully peaceful night with no noisy neighbors, and no idiots that can’t figure out how to close a door quietly. I was ready for the next day of snowshoeing…

Fairfield Inn, Traverse City

Last Saturday morning, I headed out for a weekend snowshoeing trip in northern Michigan. Light traffic was a welcome beginning to my weekend, and US 31 between Muskegon and Ludington was literally empty – at one point, I didn’t see a car on my side of the road for about 15 minutes. That is pretty darn sweet.

After a stop at McDonald’s for lunch – no time for fancy food, I had things to do – I made my way along M 116 to Ludington State Park.

Strapping on my Tubbs snowshoes, I headed up and down the dunes. Sure, the trail would have been easier, but what fun is that? I didn’t walk the dunes the whole way, though – that was pretty exhausting, so I cheated at times and followed the 1.5 mile path to the Big Sable Lighthouse.

One of my goals in life is to view all the lighthouses in Michigan. Big Sable was a new one for me. I was practically alone on the trail, and I spent a few minutes taking pictures and enjoying the winter wind blowing off of Lake Michigan before heading back to the trail.

The Lighthouse Trail runs east from the lighthouse, across the dunes, and into the woods. It was a tough hike in snowshoes, and I probably would have collapsed if not for the reenergizing candy I brought. (You can keep your power bars and energy drinks, I’ll take chocolate and peanut butter.)

The trails were not at all crowded, and I only saw four other people on the 2+ miles it took me to hike back. I was tempted to hike more in Ludington, but I had plans to be in Traverse City by late afternoon. So I left Ludington with some trails left un-hiked, but I’ll be back someday to complete the mission.

What could be better than walking on a frozen Lake Michigan in February? Nothing, that’s what.

A visit to Saugatuck State Park near, of all places, Saugatuck is just where I needed to go to have such an experience such. Up and down hills, through the forests, and besides ski track… because you don’t want to walk in ski tracks. Skiers are really sensitive to that sort of things – anger, denial, depression – they go through all the stages.

When I exited the forest onto the beach, there was no one else around, oddly enough. Only me, snow, ice, and the potential of frostbite. To me, that is a good afternoon. Frozen swells and snow-covered beaches, with a stiff wind thrown in for good measure.

I was able to walk a few hundred feet onto the ice, and I was still very far away from the waterline. I didn’t go too far, though, since if I fell through, no one would find me until spring, and I had nachos to make that night. Priorities.

Saugatuck State Park is also good to visit in the warmer months, if you’re into that sort of thing. There are lovely (warm) beaches and the Felt Mansion, and you can even see cactus that grow in Michigan. Yes, we have one.

But don’t look for them in winter.

Out into the snow I went for a brief snowshoeing excursion at Sleepy Hollow State Park in beautiful, exotic Laingsburg, MI. It excites the soul just to think about it.

I hadn’t visited Sleepy Hollow since last fall, before hunting season. Too many stories of hunting accident make me leery of venturing into a state park where hunters lurk, and I just don’t look good in a bright orange hat, so I stuck to the Ingham county parks.

I had the park to myself and I followed the paths for half the time, and walked in the deeper snow beside the paths for the other half. Really, what’s the point of wearing snowshoes if you aren’t going to walk in deeper snow once in a while? But this was the first time I had worn them this winter – we haven’t had a lot of snow here in lower Michigan – and I didn’t want to wear myself out too much.

I have a pair of starter Tubbs snowshoes. They are among the cheaper ones I found. I didn’t want to invest much until I knew that I enjoyed snowshoeing. Which I do, I just don’t do it much yet. When I make more trips, then I’ll look at a better set. I hadn’t actually intended to ever buy snowshoes, but an incident the year before with an unpleasant wintertime walk in knee-deep snow changed my attitude.

I spent almost two hours walking around the quiet trails, enjoying the aversion most people have to hiking in the cold weather. Sometimes human nature works to my advantage. And as a bonus, if you’re looking for a peaceful campground, there are plenty of spaces available.

A trip north to the in-laws was in the cards for us last weekend. They live about 25 minutes southwest of Traverse City in an area filled with beautiful forests, lakes, hills, and trails. Alas, I didn’t spend much time enjoying the great outdoors, but Andrea and I made a trip into Traverse City to enjoy some of the city’s wonderful ambience.

The highlight of our brief trip was Amical, Andrea’s favorite restaurant. And, I suppose, mine too. They have one of the best appetizers ever, olive twists. On previous trips, I have gone to Amical just for the olive twists – they are worth a their own trip.

Our oh-so-brief stay included a visit to Jacques Torres, a chocolatier located conveniently next to Amical. We got a box of a dozen chocolates and some chocolate-covered Cheerios. No, I had never heard of them either. The chocolate chip cookies looked great, and I’m planning on having one on my next trip.

The last stop downtown was to the Traverse City visitor’s center on Union Street. Even though I have all the magazines and brochures I need about the area, I still like to stop. You never know what new and exciting things have popped up since the last visit. And it has a public bathroom – you can’t put a price on that.

As an aside, I visited one time and one of the volunteers working at the visitor’s center asked if I was the maestro. I don’t have any nicknames, so I said that no, I wasn’t the maestro. He took me around the corner and showed me a life-size cardboard cutout of… me. It was actually the conductor of the Traverse City Symphony Orchestra, Kevin Rhodes, but we look oddly similar.

As we were leaving town, we stopped at the Meijer to pick up a “Best of” Nick Jr. DVD for my daughter (I had remembered the portable DVD player, but forgot the DVDs, which doesn’t do a lot of good), though she ended up not needing them. The 3+ hour car rides went surprisingly well, with no meltdowns. This was due, in a big way, to Andrea’s purchase of Laura Berkner CDs. Elena really seems to like those. Anything to make the car ride easier is okay with me.

An article on The Chicago Tribune talked about modern architecture tours in Michigan. As a fan of architecture, I was glad to see a shout-out to this poor state.

When I work in Detroit (which hasn’t happened lately), I take my handy AIA: Detroit handbook to identify the various buildings throughout the city. Slightly geeky? Most definitely, but my natural curiosity requires me to know what those beautiful, though (in many cases) rotting, buildings are. What if I’m kidnapped and put inside an abandoned building, which could happen wandering through Detroit. I could help the police identify where I was. Knowledge is power, as G.I. Joe used to say.

My favorite of the golden oldies in Detroit is the Michigan Central Depot. Formerly a train station (until 1988) and the site of movie shootings such as The Transformers, the Depot sits quietly as it has for decades. There is the occasional talk of tearing it down, but I hope it stays – it was beautiful once, and if the Michigan economy ever turns around, it could be again.

The current victim of the wrecking ball (figuratively speaking, since they don’t use balls anymore) is the Lafayette Building. If you look closely at the picture, you can see trees growing on top of the building. Talk about a rooftop garden.

I took a training class in downtown Detroit, and I could see the Lafayette Building from the training room. It’s too bad they are tearing it down, partly because it is a sign that things were once better in Detroit, but also because there is no concrete plan for the site. A little park, perhaps? A shooting range? A place to send smoke signals to Canada asking for money?

Back to the Tribune article. There was a link to the Michigan Modern blog, which is one I’ll be following. The Michigan State Historic Preservation Office Blog is another such blog. The posts are not edge-of-your-seat exciting, but they are informative.

Thanks, Tribune! We need all the help we can get.

Ten new trails. That is one of my 2010 goals, and I wanted to start the year off right, so that first new (to me) trail was Lincoln Brick Park in Grand Ledge.

About twenty minutes from my mid-Michigan home, Lincoln Brick is the closest of the parks on my “not visited” list. There was an honest to goodness brick factory on the land that is now an Eaton County park, and a few of the crumbling buildings remain. If, for some reason, the manufacturing history of Eaton County isn’t your thing, there are also a playground, beach, and interpretive center, in addition to a few miles of trails.

I started out in the “plains” area behind the interpretive center, the trail forming a loop around the snowy grasslands before plunging into the tree line near the Grand River. That wasn’t an easy portion of the trail. A recent snow-melting warming followed by a ice-forming cooling meant a slippery trail. I’m going to show you what I mean mathematically:

Ice + trail near steep drop off + river = bad news.

But, I managed to stay dry and enjoy a bit of solitude, as no one else was there during my visit. Just me and the ducks, and they seems aggravated that I was bothering them by being in their park.

The area that is now the beach was once a quarry, and both are overlooked by the Tallman Trail. For whatever reason, no one enjoying the empty beach on the gray, twenty-something temperature day. Wimps.

Lincoln Brick was one of the shorter trail systems I’ve walked, to short for my tastes. But it kicked off my “10 trails in ’10 campaign” and I’m all about variety, so it was a Monday morning well spent.

I have to set this up a little before I explain why this was the worst hotel. We only stayed one night (a few hours, in fact), but if you combine the bad hotel with the rest of the day, it will make more sense.

We were tent camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, at the Tahquamenon Falls State Park, which is a great campground very close to the lower falls. (There are two falls, upper and lower. The upper are bigger, but I prefer the lower – more scenic, and you can walk through the falls. I wouldn’t recommend doing that at Niagara Falls.)

It rained all day. Remember when I said we were in a tent? Rain + tent = suckage. And people, ourselves included, go to the UP to spent time outside, so a complete day of rain in a big, big downer. So our day of fun in the sun was quashed.

But we salvaged our day as best we could.  We started off with an aborted visit to the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. By the time we arrived, the museum was already packed with people, since there is so little to do that doesn’t involve the outdoors. So no go on the museum.

Over to Sault Ste. Marie, one of the United State’s oldest cities. And we took in all the it had to offer – the Sault Locks, the theater(to see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby), and Wal*Mart. Yes, we painted the town red. And the rain stopped long enough for us to return to the state park to view the upper falls and enjoy dinner and blueberry beer (for me) at the Tahquamenon Falls Brewery and Pub. A bar on State land – I love it. Finally, my tax dollars going to something useful to me.

Since our day had ended on a high note, we returned in the hopes of having just enough dry wood to make Smores. And that was discovered that our tent leaked, soaking our blankets on our semi-comfortable air mattress. An appropriate ending to our day.

I graciously (I’m very selfless and modest) offered to sleep in the wet spot (make your own joke), but Andrea didn’t want to sleep in a wet tent. We left the campground and tried to find a room in the closest town, Paradise. (Michigan has a range of towns, from Paradise to Hell, so take your pick.) But with the Blueberry Festival in full swings – people love their blueberries – there were no rooms to be had at the inn. The man at the counter at the Best Western called around and found a room in their Newberry branch, about 40 minutes away.

I was not happy.

We drove 40 minutes to our room. And it was decent room, complete with a Jacuzzi tub, and had we not been tired and annoyed from the turn our day had taken, we might have used it.

The next morning was when I discovered all the red bites along my legs – bedbugs. And up until now, I had thought bedbugs were just in third-world countries, or at least third-world states, not chain motels in Michigan. Life teaches us lessons every day.

And to top it all off, Andrea, being pregnant, was very hungry, and we slept too late for breakfast. And all our food was back in the campground in our wet tent. This was a full-on food emergency. A hungry Andrea is scary, but a hungry and pregnant Andrea is… well, not good.

Things weren’t going well until we remembered we had crackers in the trunk, and that satisfied her until we reached a restaurant for breakfast. We returned to our campsite and packed up for our six-hour trip home. There was no sorrow as we threw the leaky tent into the dumpster on the way out the campground.

And there has not been a tent in the house since.

Okay, let’s bring this Frankenmuth thing full circle. Last time, I talked about food and hotels. As a recap, Splash Village – fun buy noisy. Zehnder’s and The Bavarian Inn – a gargantuan amount of food. Moving on, what else is there to do in Frankenmuth besides water slides and eat fried chicken?

Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland is the obvious choice. Be warned: If you hate Christmas, then this store will probably cause a psychotic break.

What kind of ornament do you want? Frog bells? They got them, and after visiting Bronner’s, so do I. Lumberjacks? Probably have those too, but I don’t have one. Lights, stuffed animals, books, toys, and just about anything you could want to decorate your room, house, yard, or continent for Christmas, they have it.

And don’t dare shoplift. There is a two-storey Santa watching over the store, and he’ll open up a serious can of whoop-ass on would-be thieves.

For those of you staying at Splash Village, Bronner’s is just across the parking lot from the hotel. But be warned, it’s a big parking lot, large enough for hundreds of buses full of single-minded tourists bent on spending money ready to pounce on unwary aisles of Christmas goodness. And with our 2-year old, the trip across the blacktop took many times longer than it could have. She insisted on pushing her own stroller (which is never in a straight line) and visiting the gigantic guardian Santa.

If you’re in a shopping mood, there are plenty of places to joyously part with your cash. River Place, an outdoor mall sitting just above the Cass River, is the most in-your-face. With everything you need (fudge), and lots of things you don’t (lederhosen), it’s a good boredom-breaker. We took our daughter to the mirror maze which held her interest for five minutes before she wanted to leave. We didn’t make it very far, on account of all the mirrors. Someday, I’ll go back and beat it. Someday…

We timed our visit perfectly with the World Beer Expo. Oh, wonderful beer, and lots of it. I drank mainly Michigan beers, but there was a tasty mead from Colorado that I enjoyed.

And though I mentioned it in my last post, you can visit Splash Village for some indoor water park fun. I had a freshly broken toe (I broke it the morning we left), so I didn’t partake in the waterslides, but it was still fun to see the daughter enjoy all the slides and toys.

This obviously isn’t a complete list – I didn’t even mention the Cheese Haus. I know, I know – a travesty.  But hopefully this is a good start for some activities.