Traverse City, Lake Leelanau, & Leelanau Penisula, MI.

                 Wednesday 9/11/2013

On Wednesday we drove 7 miles to Traverse City, from Everflowing Waters Campground for the 8-12 Farmers Market. It is also held on Saturday 8-12.

The Traverse City Farmers Market is a very large farmers market. Traverse City is the largest city in the 21 county Northern Michigan region. It has a population of 14, 674, and 143,372 in the Traverse City micropolitan area.

After the market, we walked around the downtown area, than had lunch at the Red Ginger, which is located in the downtown also.

I had been craving Chinese food, and this was one of the Chinese restaurants that the visitor center recommended.

I order the Pad Thai which had rice noodles with chicken breast, local organic tofu, Asian vegetables, egg, cilantro, and sweet and sour tamarind sauce. It was $10 for the plate and it was excellent!

Joe ordered the Chicken Panini which had grilled chicken breast, baby arugula, Swiss cheese, and apricot blue chess mayo. Joe said his was really good too. We must be on a roll. The last time we ate out we were very happy with our food too, which is usually not the case.

On the way home, I had Joe stop so I could get some pictures of the alpaca's that were just up the road from our campground. Their little house is so cute.

The next day we decided take a drive up the Leelanau Peninsula, also called Michigan's little Finger. This picture is a view of Grand Traverse Bay as we traveled through Traverse City along the south point of the bay.

Another view of Grand Traverse Bay while we zoom by in the Honda.

We drove up the east shoreline of the finger. At about where I am pointing, we turned to the west to check out Leelanau Lake.

En route of Lake Leelanau  we saw several vineyards.

So here we are on the east shoreline of Lake Leelanau.

We stopped at the boat access on South Lake Leelanau.

South Lake Leelanau has 5,693 acres, with an average depth of 24 feet deep and a maximum depth of 62 feet.

We watched a plane land on the lake and take off again. It was a bit chilly and cloudy that day, so the water looked dark. The North Lake Leelanau consists of 2,914 acres with an average depth of 40 feet and a maximum depth of 121 feet deep. With the two lake combined the North and South Lake Leelanau is 21 miles long and 1.5 miles at it's widest point, with a total of 8,608 acres. There is a mile where the lake narrows between the lakes.

We headed back to the east side of the peninsula and continued north to the tip of the peninsula to Leelanau State Park. It cost $8 to get into the park, but we had a sticker that we had purchased earlier in the summer to get in free. Joe points where we were at. The map also shows all the lighthouses along Lake Michigan.

Now you can see Michigan's Little Finger better on this map. You can also see Lake Leelanau running down the middle of the peninsula.

At the state park and at the tip of the peninsula you will find the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

There were a couple of rock planters in the yard.

If you want to climb the lighthouse tower it is another $4 for each adult or $2 for children.

Instead of climbing the tower, we walked around the lighthouse, and I visited the gift shop. The lady that was running the gift shop, told me that they live in the lighthouse, in exchange of running the lighthouse. They have done this for 5 years. We have heard of other people staying free in campgrounds for working at lighthouses, but not living in the lighthouses.

On the way back to the car we saw this sign,

and this White Cedar tree that is 125 - 200 years old.

We left the point and headed back down the east side of the finger to just north of the town of Northport. Joe had called his mother, Kay, for her friend's summer home address. Sally Hedges had hosted one of our wedding showers 20 years ago, and when we started RVing, she told us if we were ever in Michigan in the summer, to stop by her summer home. We drove to the gate house, and Joe told the gate lady we were here to see the Siefert's. The gate lady said there were no Sieferts living there. I motioned to Joe, and told him he meant Hedge's. OK, yes the Hedge's lived there, but first she had to call them before she could let us in. The grandson was there that week and didn't know us from Adam, but told the gate lady to let us in. We were hoping no one would be there and we could just drive by their home. ( But we could see that would never had worked).

I told Joe I was too embarrassed and stayed in the car. Soon Joe came out and told me the grandson, Tom, said to please come in. Comes to find out Sally has not been to the lake house in 2 years because of health problems. We only stayed for a few minutes, as the grandson and his wife were heading out the door to fly back to Cedar Rapids, IA for a wedding. The summer home had a real old charm cottage feel.

The gated community sits in a cove, which allows the homes to have docks along the shore. Tom told us to drive around the community to the point before we left.

As we drove through the loop drive, I saw this cute home. Another charming summer home.

This home was cute with it's pick door! The gated community is very upper class with a golf course and club house. It was so nice that Tom let is see this private gated Northport Point community. The average home in the community sells for $780,000

We drove to Northport, and stopped to check out the small town, and than walked down to the marina.

There was a nice boardwalk along the marina,

and lots of nice boats. We left Northport, and drove south to the town of Suttons Bay. We had Mallery with us, so we just strolled up and down the street and window shopped. There were a lot of neat boutiques that I would have enjoyed exploring if I didn't have a dog and husband along. Women, "Leave the dogs and husbands at home"!

 

We left Suttons Bay and stopped at Black Star Farms and Winery.

There was a chance for a freeze that night, so the winery was in the progress of covering all their grapes.

Beautiful deep purple grapes.

The farm has horse stables and indoor and outdoor training arena's for the guest's horses, to use during their stay at the Inn.

 

                                                  The Inn.                                                                            The farm also makes cheese at their dairy. I was looking for some goat cheese, and a store owner in Suttons Bay thought they might have some here. Unfortunately they only had cow's cheese.

As we pulled down our home road,  the alpaca's were out for pictures. I like alpaca's and can't help myself from the need to photograph them when I can!