The Passineau Family: Pittsburgh Edition: Our Vacation to Northern Michigan

We began our little vacation by traveling to Sleeping Bear Dunes, which sits on the coast of Lake Michigan. It was huge, I guess I wasn't expecting the dunes to be so big, but yeah, they're big. It's quite a hike also & I have to admit that I didn't make it all the way over the 5 large dunes to the beach of Lake Michigan. As Michael put it--I was dressed for yachting not hiking. Ok, so maybe there was some miscommunication as I thought flip flops & a sun hat would be appropriate; however, I soon learned I needed hiking shoes instead. After we had done the Dunes, we headed to Traverse City. Traverse City is a beautiful city sitting on Grand Traverse Bay. That day we had timed our trip to be there for the final day of the National Cherry Festival. I'm not even kidding, those cherries are amazing. One of the hallmarks for the festival for me would be the fact you buy large cups of fresh, washed cherries & walk around eating them & spitting the pits everywhere. They had cherry everything, cheery sauces, soaps, drinks, wines, jams, dried cherries, fresh cherries, cherry pies & pastries, & even cherry bbq sauce. Eventhough it sounds different, I sampled it & it was delish! That night we had a fabulous meal in a great sushi restaurant. I didn't take any real pics in Traverse City b/c it was sweltering. The next morning we had a lovely breakfast at a french place & headed to our next destination, which was Charlevoix. It's another beautiful bay town & known for it's yachting & cutesy shops. I had a great time browsing the shops. One notable shop for me was the handmade taffy store. They had every variety you could imagine & it was great. This area is also know for it's fresh caught white fish, so I dined on that for dinner. That evening after we were both full & happy we strolled down to the beach to watch the sunset & I took a few pictures of us on the beach using my tripod. Not perfect & it had rained on us before we did them, but I'm happy to have them (10 years of marriage next month). The next day we awoke to a rainy morning (hence no pics :), but we tried to make the best of it. We headed to Petosky to browse their shops & toured their small museum, which told about the importance of the lime mine & railroad to that area in the Victorian days. The town itself is a perfect time capsule of that era, with many homes & stores that have the original Victorian architecture. The stores inside are perfectly modern & filled with many treasures, but it's fun to see the old store fronts anyway. [I should mention that Petosky is known for being the best place to find Michigan's state rock, the Petosky stone--it's a fossilized coral reef piece that gets polished & has a spotted pattern] After we had mostly finished all of the shopping we did a brief detour into Bay View, which was on our way to Cheboygan (our final destination). All of the homes in Bay View are beautiful little Victorian cottages that served as summer homes to many folks from that time. After a quick coffee/tea refuel, we headed to Cheboygan to meet up with some of Michael's old friends, who have known him since he was a kid. It was a lovely dinner & time to reconnect before heading home to get our kiddos who were with Grandma & Grandpa in Mason. Thanks to Michael's folks for watching the girls so we could get away for a little time for each other, it was a great trip. For those of you who've never been to this area...I highly recommend it. Here are some pics to enjoy & for those of you curious, a map of the areas we visited (the red stars were our different stops :) Have a great day!