Time to head home...
Monday morning in Empire MI found me sleeping in next to my beautiful lil lady instead of crawling out of bed at 5 am to go fishing. The 48 hour fishing licenses that Bill and I bought had expired and we deflated the boat yesterday. Time to sleep in and enjoy a lil R&R before heading south.
We meet Bill and Libby downstairs for breakfast while Jerry and Amy loaded their things in their car. They stopped and sat with us a bit before heading off to have breakfast with the friend of theirs they ran into yesterday at Sleeping Bear Dunes while they were waiting on us to discover that lake Michigan was a long way off! After breakfast and saying our good byes we loaded up Pearl and settled up with Holly before we slowly pulled away from the Cottonwood.
Our plan for the drive home was a simple one. Take our time and if we saw something that we wanted to stop and check out we were going to do just that. We told friends of ours that have a place at Bear Lake, that is just maybe 45 mins south of Empire, that we would stop by for a visit on our way back so that was the first real planned stop. Before leaving town we had to make one more pass by the beach and sink our feet in the sand one last time. We walked along the beach a ways but ran out of room between the tall grass and the water. Last year there was a wide area between the water and the grass. At first I was perplexed why the grass had grown so far out then it hit me. The grass had not grown, the lake had! With all the ice cover this past winter and run off from all the melting snow the lakes were up quite a bit. There would have been no way to ride a sand bike from Empire to Sleeping Bear Dunes this year like we did last year. Cindy picked up a souvenir rock and we headed south.
Amy had asked us earlier if we saw the fly fishing shop in the small town south of Empire on the way up. I missed it so we were on the look out for it on the way back. We found it in Benzonia so we pulled in to check it out. It was called Backcast Fly shop and was rally a pretty neat little store. They had great prices on embroidered t shirts with fly fishing logos so I had to get one for myself and one for Dottie for taking care of boys while we were gone.
Back on the road we soon arrived at Scott and Mary's for a quick visit. They have a neat lil vacation cabin on Bear Lake and were up for a week. If you follow our blog you might remember that they had us up last summer and Scott gave us our only "real" sailing lesson. While the lesson did not go as smoothly as I am sure he had hoped it would it did firmly plant the seed in us that we wanted a sailboat! Scott was not home as he was still sailing in Traverse Bay so we visited with Mary a bit before continuing on down the road. We hope to have them down to sail with us on the Memory Maker soon.
Just east of Luddington MI we stopped at a really neat cabin furnishings store that we had seen last year but did not get to stop. What a cool store! I wanted one of everything! One of the things I saw that I really liked was a canoe being paddled by two raccoons.
I have always had a soft spot for raccoons and after raising Remy the raccoon I am kinda attached to the lil buggers. It was a bit pricey, ok it was crazy expensive, and Cindy questioned my sanity for wanting to give that much for it. Sadly I left it behind, but I have their number!!! The store, like Sleeping Bear Dunes, was much larger than it appeared to be from the road as it just went on and on. We had to get out of there before our charge cards got overheated! Turns out that the store is also a showroom for custom wood stairways like you would see in million dollar log cabins. I should have taken a pic of the stairway I was standing on when I took this pic as it was a massive spiral stairway made from a the whole log of a tree. It was really something to see.
After both of us got a bad case of the "got a have its" we continued our journey home. We had brought along our styro foam cooler that we had bought on return trip home last year so we could bring home more blueberries and cherries this year. So we had to stop to get some on the way back as we were all but out of blueberries. The cherries we bought last year barely made it home before they were all gone. We decided to stop at the same road side market we stopped at last year which is just north of Holland MI. Pulling in we saw that they had hickory bent wood double rocking chairs sitting out front. Now Cindy and I have been wanting a double snow shoe rocking chair for sometime but I have not been able to find a good deal on one so we were still looking for something like that. We want something we can pull right up in front of the fire and sit in together on cold winter nights. We bee lined it for the rockers and tried them out. Oh my they were so comfy!!! As we sat rocking in them we each took turns guessing how much they might want for them. I think we settled on 599 or more. We agreed if it was a reasonable price we needed it but we both felt it was going to way more than we wanted to give. We finally got up and got our produce we stopped for. While paying for the produce Cindy nonchalantly asked how much the double rockers were. I think we were both a bit shocked when the girl said 299!!! I finally found my voice as I was so excited( hey, it's the little things in life that get me) and told her that if it was ok to see if we could get it in our car we would take one. She said go for it so out we went to unload Pearl in the parking lot and see if we could get the chair to go inside her rear door. After several tries and maybe 15 minutes of trying this way then that way our chances of getting this rocker home were not looking good. I contemplated tying it down to the roof rack but it was such an odd shape I did not see anyway that was going to work either. I could see that Cindy was clearly bummed we were not going to be able to get it so I said lets try it one more time. This time we turned it around, flipped it over and, turned it upside down as I did not think we had tried that combination yet. It went in a lot further but still stopped with about 1 1/2" of the runner catching at the top of the door opening. It was so close and I was not going to let a 1 1/2" keep me from getting a great deal on a double hickory rocker. If I could just get the part I was holding to drop down a bit more I think it would go. Then it hit me! I had to put the spare tire on the week before when we got the flat tire at the sailing association and I remembered that there is more room under the floor where the spare tire is kept. So we took it back out and removed the floor and tried it again.
IT WENT IN!!!!!! Now we just had to cram all our luggage, an inflatable boat, kayak paddle, and a cooler full of blueberries and cherries back in around the chair.
It took a bit of shoving and squeezing but it all went in and the doors actually shut without any need of assistance from hydraulic rams so we were good to go!!! We were both excited at the great deal we got. I don't think that we were even out of the parking lot before Cindy said "You know what this means don't you?" I didn't but I was pretty sure I was about to find out. Cindy informed me that "Now the couch is going to have to get replaced". Why is it that one thing always leads to another, to another, etc? Now not only is the couch on the chopping block but our end tables are getting the axe to. I will give her that one as our end table is actually a piece of outside furniture that I brought inside to temporarily serve the purpose. So now I am making new end table to match the dining room table I made. the couch might have to wait just a bit longer though.
It is already mid afternoon and we had not made it very far down the road. I don't think either of us really cared as we did not want to see our fun trip end any sooner than it absolutely had to. We soon found ourselves stopping again just another hour into the trip home because we can't let a chance to stop in South Have pass us by. We headed straight for the Black River tavern for a beverage and snacks. While there I had to take a pic looking out at the lighthouse and send it to gang to see if they could tell where were
The lighthouse looks kinda small in the pic so they were unable to figure it out. Turns out they were all driving in a pouring rain storm in the Indianapolis area so we were glad we were not in a hurry to get back. If we timed it right we would get home after the storms passed. After our snack at the Black River Tavern we took another walk our to the lighthouse and back, then got Cindy a shirt see saw on the trip up that she wanted but did not get. Amy texted us and told us about an antique store a few blocks to our south that had a lot sailboat and camping items in it so south we went. We found the store but did not have much time to look around before they closed. Cindy was still able to find a few treasures that would be returning home with us ;-)
By now it is 6 pm and we still have a good 5 hour drive in good traffic ahead of us. We both knew we should really get on the road and try to focus on getting home. Reality sucks. We tried our best to keep our eyes on the road so we would not see anything else we wanted to stop and check out. We did slow down going through Lapaz, IN which is where the shop was that had the wooden canoe we had stopped and looked at on the way up but luckily the shop was closed. Probably a good thing as the last thing I needed was another project.
The hours ticked away as the miles behind us added up. Michigan got smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror and I was bummed to leave as it such an enjoyable trip. I had really enjoyed having Cindy by my side almost constantly for the past 5 days and I knew once we pulled in the driveway the vacation was over and it was back to the real world. Thanks to a rolling convoy of trucks hauling really long concrete stringers for the new over passes over I 65 on the south side of Indy our vacation was going to last just a bit longer as it took a while to get past the construction. But it was not long before we were turning onto our road and the reality that our fun trip was about to end. Edward and Wilson were thrilled to see us as tail were wagging at warp speed! Fortunately the rocker came out a whole lot easier than it went in and we were unpacked in fairly short order. It was a little past midnight when crawled into bed and I joked how once again we made the most of every minute in a 24 hour day.
That is one of the really awesome things about Cindy and I. We don't have to be on vacation to make the most of every day we have together. I seems like I don't get much sleep anymore as we are always dragging in at some late hour from playing somewhere! It all kinda re-enforces the signature on my emails that says "Life is Good, Live it Large". While Life is good(really it awesome now that Cindy is in it) life is short. So we live it Large, and we live it NOW!!!!
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