One More Leaves, Now There Is Two Again

                          August 17, 2017

Five days after the kids left for southern USA, we took mom to the airport in Traverse City. After seeing her off and some shopping, we decided to have lunch at a restaurant in downtown Traverse City. We strolled the streets of the downtown and chose Poppycocks.

Traverse City reminds us of Iowa City, Iowa.The town has a lot of energy and vibrancy. There are several colleges in Traverse City, which brings lots of young and fresh ideas.

We started with a cup of soup. Mine was sausage vegetable soup. Really good flavors. Can't remember what Joe got.

The wine by the glass board had a wine with almost our last name.

Great sandwiches!

Mine. Can't remember what it was, but very good.

The drink list was very interesting. Next time we go to lunch, I am going to get one of those special drinks.

When we got back to Boyne City, Lake Charlevoix was pretty as a picture, with water like glass.

One day Joe noticed our neighbor Bill talking to a tree service, so he went over to see what was going on. Bill was going to have a few trees removed from his property and Joe asked if he could ask the service how much it would cost to remove the dead trees in the 20 foot lot shared by neighbors that don't have lake front property located between Bill's and our lake lots. After getting a bid, Joe asked our other neighbor, Micheal, if he would be interested in going in on half of the cost. Micheal uses the 20 foot lot to put in his row boat and this would open up his view from his house across the street.

So with everyone on board, Bills trees and the dead trees were removed. Below is a video of one of Bills trees coming down. It's better to see the action if you put it into full screen mode.

It definitely opened our view to more lake.

I don't think I ever showed you the finished mudroom. This view is from the dining room. Door to the right goes into the new larger 1/2 bathroom.

View from the side door or should I say our front door, since that the door we always enter.

View of the coat hook board and the bench seat with cubbies below. It was summer when I took this picture, so no coats on the hooks like there are now that we are in winter. My bench came without baskets, and the cushions were a boring cream color. I had the hardest time finding baskets that fit the slots. And when I did, there was like 3 baskets a like at the most, so I ended up having to put in two similar styles. I would never buy a bench without the baskets again. The cushions I had reupholstered.

Another picture of our new improved lake view. Joe and I also trimmed up a few branches from our Norwegian Maple trees in our front yard to increase the view even more.

August 21  
 Our heat wave continued reaching 89 degrees. It was so hot, the only way to cool off was to sit on the dock with a cool refreshing drink and jump into the lake ever so often, as seen below.

We were told by the previous owner that there was a mooring out past our dock. It use to be marked with a plastic bottle. But it had sometime ago lost its cap and sunk to the bottom of the lake. Joe and I had been looking for it ever since we moved in. When the water was calm, we would take the boat out and drive around out in front of our lot. We found it this summer and Joe retied a new buoy to it. He hired a diver to check it out for reliability to tie a boat to it.

It looked kind of stormy to the NW, so he had to look quick and get back out of the water, just in case of lighting strikes.

Here he comes after investigating the set up. The news was not good. He said it would not be good to anchor any boat. Joe had thought about a small sailboat in the future. If he wants one, it will need a new mooring. This one is only good for out floating 6 person island.

The end of August we continued our yearly on going garage sale. We sold enough stuff this summer and took the rest to Salvation Army. So glad to have room in our garage for other stuff than stuff we can't use. The main reason I took this picture was because Joe pointed out a bird we had never seen up north before.

Here is a better picture of it. A Great Blue Heron. We didn't know they migrated. We see them all winter on the beach in Gulf Shores, but never up here. Because we are 4 miles out of the city limits, we have ditches where the rain run off goes. This heron was fishing our ditches. Maybe he missed us and followed us up here for the summer.

I have 7 twin beds and 4 full/queen sized beds (two are pullout couches) in our house for our guests and us. This spring I had a heck of a time trying to figure out which sheets went on which bed. I couldn't even figure out where half the pillow cases were. I knew I needed a better system this year. Thank goodness for Pinterest! This year I put the sheets in it's pillow case and the pillow case enclosed sheets in drawers in the room the bed is located at, instead of the linen closet shelf. On top of the pillow case I labeled whether it was a twin, full, or queen set, since one room has two twins and one queen bed in it.

I also bought plastic mattress bags and after stripping and washing the sheet, I bagged the mattresses. I hate seeing the bare mattress sit for a year getting dusty. If I leave the sheets and bed cover on them for a year, I feel they need to be rewashed. Troubles of being a cottage Inn owner!

A new friend I met last summer, Robbie, invited me to go with her to Elk Rapids to have lunch with another one of her friends that lives there. Before lunch we went to a little town, Alden, on Torch Lake to go to a few shops. This shop,"Nifty", had a ton of cute stuff.

Like this cottage sign, though it was pretty expensive and could easily be made if one could buy the Michigan wood pieces. But I don't have a place for it anyway, but found many other things I couldn't live without. I forgot to get a picture of Robbie, Shirley and I, though I think thy are like me-"hate self portraits these day"!

In September, Joe and I resumed our boat shopping. This is a 2001 33 foot Formula Day Cruiser.

This looks huge compared to our 21 foot open bow boat. It has a 10 foot beam, making it really wide, 454 twin engines, and a front end cabin for sleeping with a bathroom, which is a must for me. The down side is it doesn't have a trailer and would probably need a permit to be trailer-able. Joe also could not completely stand straight up in the cabin which he doesn't like. On the hand, I have plenty of room to stand straight. There are some benefit to being shorter.

The next one we saw was a 2004  27 foot Formula cabin cruiser with twin 5.0 liter engines. Joe could stand up completely in the sleeping cabin area. It also had two beds, one for shorties like me and another with more leg room for Joe. I think it had a trailer and is trailer-able without a permit. The owners seemed to take excellent care of the boat, storing it in heated storage.I forgot to get an outside picture of this boat. Sometime I forget to do my job.

Next we saw a 2001 28 foot Sea Ray Cabin Cruiser 7.4 Liter single engine. It was nice but with one engine and being a Sea Ray, I was just not sold on it.Our boat is a Sea Ray and a good boat, but the Formula's seem to be the best sellers up on Lake Charlevoix. Everyone we know has a Formula and tells us it's the best boat to have. We also have been told that if you are going to go out on Lake Michigan, it is good to have 2 engines in case one goes out.

Our friends Tim and Robbie have a 27 foot open bow Formula.They were taking it out of the water for the season and I wanted to see it before they stored it away. We went with Robbie as she drove it to the boat ramp and Tim drove the trailer to the ramp.

It has a really nice swim, platform on the back side with seating facing the water, only for use when stopped.

It does have a rest room under the passenger seat dash. Tight but doable if you don't want to get into the water.

On another day, we drove back down to Traverse City to see a couple more boats. The next one is at one of the many marina's in Traverse City.

We strolled the docks waiting for the owner to show up. View of the waters in Grand Traverse Bay in this marina. Even though full of weeds, it is crystal clear and can be seen down to almost 25 feet.

This next boat is a 1984 27 foot Tiara 350 rebuilt twin engines.

The Tiara is also a very high end boat. Unfortunately the cabin, even though was done in high end wood finishing, looked not so well taken care of. In the bathroom, there was a lot of water staining around a window which always send red flags. He took us out on Grand Traverse Bay for a ride. It rode really nice and fast.

The next boat we saw was a 2004 30 foot Regal Cabin Cruiser with twin 220 engines. It was a really nice boat and Joe could stand up in the cabin area. It had a a very large 3 foot swim platform. The down side was the engine size. It might be under powered for the size of the boat, and it is not a high end boat. But that being said, the priced was at a lower price too. Because it was out for the season, we didn't want to ask him to put it back into the water unless we were more sure we were interested.

The last boat that we saw on our Traverse City run was a 2007 30 foot Formula with twin 350s and the most expensive boat we had seen.

It also had the 3 foot swim platform which is nice because it extends beyond the engines. With little one, it's nice to have it cover. Kids don't always think and could jump and slice a foot on the blades. Down side: Way more money than we want to spend because it is too new and we would lose a lot of equity in depreciation. The search continues until we realize what is most important and what is not!