Old Mission Penisula, MI.

                         Monday 9/9/2013

On our second day in the Traverse City area, we decided to drive up the Old Mission Peninsula. Joe is pointing on the map where traverse City is located in Michigan. ( Yellow highlights are RV routes- orange highlights are Honda routes) Our drive that day is straight up from the pen point to the end of the orange line.

Here is a different map that is a close up of the previous map. Joe points out with the pen the ending route of the Old Mission Peninsula. Traverse City is the yellow area below the peninsula.

We took Peninsula Drive up the west shoreline, seeing mostly homes lining the shore. We found a boat access area to check out the water, and park for our lunch.

Half way up the peninsula, the west shoreline road ended, so we took a road to the center of peninsula and hook into M-37 to Mapleton. Mapleton consists of a restaurant, gas station, and a small general store. This home had some flowing vines all over the porch roof that gave the home a cottage look.

We found this fruit and vegetable stand in Mapleton also. All around the Traverse City area and on the peninsula you see fruit and vegetable stands like this one. You can get fresh local peaches, apples, apricots, blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and much more. No one is at the stands, you just drop your money into a can with a slit in the lid for your purchases. We saw these kind of stands when we were in Maine also.

 

From Mapleton, M-37 goes up the center of the peninsula with occasional bay views when we reached hilltop heights.

You also find tons of winery's in this part of Michigan. You don't need to go to Napa Valley to find winery's, if you live in the Midwest!

The road ends at Mission Point  Lighthouse. The water was low at the point, so I was able to get a waterfront view of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse is located on the 45th parallel of latitude, halfway between the equator and the north pole.

View from the door of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse is open April to October 10 - 5. In November and December it is open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We didn't pay the $4 to climb to the tower. We have been in much taller lighthouses. Once you have seen the biggest and best, it is hard to get excited about anything else.

You can also view the Hesler Log House next to the lighthouse.

The house was built 14 miles south of the lighthouse in 1856, but moved here later.

We left the lighthouse and drove to the town of Old Mission on the west tip shores of the peninsula. This is Old Mission Harbor.  Haserot Beach Park is a block from here with a small but very nice beach.

Old Mission Inn establish in 1869.

A different way to grow grapevines.

A beautiful home as we travel south.

A very nice drive on the east shoreline of Old Mission Peninsula, though most of the lakefront homes are really close to each other.

Once back in Traverse City, we stop to see the Traverse City State Park.

Nice park if you don't want to watch TV. Too many trees! The positive of the park is it is just two miles from downtown, and there is a beach across the street via overpass. Negatives- park sit next to highway, so there is a lot of traffic noise. There is no sewer hook ups, and I read that the showers had hot water for about 3 minutes, than go cold. We liked where we were at better, at Everflowing Waters Campground, north of Traverse City 7 miles.

After we got home, Joe took a picture of the sunset from Everflowing Campground.