2019 Summer Adventure Post #5 Traverse City, Michigan

Traverse City, Michigan 6/16-6/19

So after Nathan and Elizabeth got married they talked to us about an idea they both had.  With her family in Minnesota and us living in Massachusetts and they would be heading to St. Louis they wanted to create a yearly combined family camping trip to a new destination each year.  We all thought it was a great idea.  Last year, since they had just relocated to St. Louis, we made that year destination-St. Louis.  We had a nice time last year but with the unusually HOT summer we all said next year we are going somewhere that is much cooler and we came up with the idea of the UP of Michigan.  So that will bring us to the next week of our trip.

We decided to call it the yearly Thompson/Jacobsen Rendezvous. Ok so the last 8 days have definitely been more "Vacation Mode".   I am going to break the trip up into the 3 different areas we stopped at.  This first post today will cover our Traverse City stop.  There was so much to do and see in this area, it for sure is a place we will come back to visit again.  We got to the campground and settled in.  Judy and John(Elizabeth's parents)arrived shortly after.  They just purchased a new tow behind camper.  It was really nice.  It was 15 foot Lance camper that was amazingly spacious and perfect for them. Then Nathan and Elizabeth arrived.  They had left St. Louis a day earlier to make a quick stop in Indiana to visit a friend that Elizabeth had met in New Zealand while she was studying over

 there in college.  During this little side trip they even got to stop at a baseball game.  They said they saw a great park.  It was at Comstack Park in West Michigan.  It is a Single A team called the West Michigan whitecaps, affiliated with the Detroit Tigers.

Judy's Creative Side-A fun flag for everyone

It was great visiting with everyone and catching up on all that was happening.  Judy surprised us with a flag.    Elizabeth also made us all matching T-shirts which you will see in a later blog.  We hung out for the day visiting and planning our weeks adventures.  Nathan tends to take on the role of planner and does enjoy it so that works out for all of us.  We just add in our thoughts and he gets things planned for us.








I was amazed at how much there was to do in this area.  Monday was quite the busy day.  We started the day at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

View we saw on our hike up the Empire Bluff Trail

State Park. The park is located along the northwest coast of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan Leelanau and Benzie counties near Empire, Michigan.  We had to purchase a day pass which was $25 and decided to go with the option of a yearly State Park Pass for $80.  We are thinking this may be best option since we hope to visit some more parks and already talking about our Thompson/Jacobsen Rendezvous possibly being in Utah next year.  We are thinking the pass will pay for itself.  So the trail we chose was the Empire Bluff Trail.  It was a beautifully maintained trail that led out to a beautiful view of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes and Lake Michigan.  It gave us a quick look at the Sand Dunes that we would be heading to, to climb soon. 

On our hike!

Beautiful butterfly seen on the trail!

We left there and went to the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  It was an amazing site.  Massive glaciers enlarged river valleys and carved our the wide, deep basins of the Great Lakes.  They also created "Perched Dunes"  which are dunes formed by glacier sands deposited on plateaus high above the shore.  The Sleeping Bear Dunes are easily accessible and a beautiful example of this type of dune. 

Base of the sand dune.  So amazing!

The pictures here of the dunes just can't show how massive they actually are.  We were right at the base of the dune taking the picture and to get an idea of the size you can see how small the people look on the hill of the dune in the picture.  Steven, Judy, John and I climbed up the first dune and that took at least a half an hour.  The kids continued climbing a bit and we decided to stay where we were to get their picture.  At least that is what we told them, we actually were a bit tired from the climb.  It was definitely a lot of work.  (Especially since we had just done another hike at another trail).  We thought when we got to the top we would see Lake Michigan but all you could see in the distance were more sand dunes.  From what we were told it was about a 3 hour hike and you would be climbing sand dune after sand dune so we just enjoyed the views from where we were.  The kids did some more climbing and running back down the dunes.  It was fun watching them. 

The kids having fun running up the dunes!

Trying to show video of Nathan running down not sure it will work?

Almost to the top of the 1st dune, it was beautiful.

We had gone out for lunch at a local diner but had packed a picnic lunch and decided to take a scenic ride out this evening to see the sunset.  So we found a picnic stop along the drive and we all agreed we enjoyed our picnic lunch more than our lunch in town today. We were a little concerned it might be buggy but to our surprise it was really nice.  What has been really throwing us off out here is the sun doesn't set till after 9:30p.m. so we were having supper at the picnic stop at 8:15p.m. and it felt like 4 in the afternoon.  Thanks to Judy for packing everything and anything we needed for a great picnic in her picnic basket.  Well it was getting close to 9:00p.m. so we decided to continue on the scenic drive and Nathan had read there was a perfect spot to stop for the sunset.  We had hardly seen any cars and we had the picnic spot to ourselves.  Once we arrived at the sunset stop we found out where everybody was, yes at this stop.  It was amazing!!!!  We were so blessed with the one of the most or I might even have to say the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.  The sun was setting and there was a band of clouds just as it was going down and then an opening in the clouds just before it set.  I will put some pictures of it, but again so hard to catch the full beauty of something in a picture but we will try to give you an idea.

The sky almost looked like a painting!

Judy and John sitting on the dune waiting for the sun to set!

This was the view down the hill from us, yes that little black dot on the trail is a person
That is how steep and long the drop was to the water.

Well, we headed home after a long but amazing day!  Definitely got a good nights sleep!  And oh yes, I did say we had decided to go somewhere cooler this year and it has not disappointed us.  The days are in the high 60's to low 70's.  Nights a bit cooler down to high 40's.  Yes we are using the heat in the camper at night.  But it is perfect weather for what we are doing in the area.

The next day we went into Traverse City and walked around. It is the largest city in the 21 county Northern Michigan region.  It was another gorgeous day and they had many of the chain stores, Talbots, Chicos, etc.  But they had many unique stores with many different items.  Had fun shopping and ended up buying our first new art work for the new camper.  I love the saying on it "Let's Go Somewhere".  We stopped at the visitor center and they suggested a couple of stops.  We went to Mission Lighthouse that was located on Old Mission point, a peninsula jutting in Grand Traverse Bay.  It was a small lighthouse but very interesting.  We actually got to go up the stairs of the lighthouse and it was amazing how narrow the space was to get up there.  They spoke of how the lighthouse keeper had to go up every 4 hours and tend to the lighthouse. It was a very exhausting and busy job.  It was decommissioned in 1933 and replaced with an automatic buoy light.  Amazing that there are not really any more light keepers left.  Technology has eliminated that job totally.  But nice that they keep the lighthouses up so we can visit them and appreciate the beauty of them.

We also had to(upon the recommendation of the visitor center worker)visit an ice cream place call Moomers!  They had a dairy and farm right there and make all their own ice cream.  It was great.  Being that cherries are abundant up in this area they had a cherry flavored ice cream.  Steven and Judy tried that and really enjoyed it.  It was a fun place to go.

We can't be near a baseball park and not visit it!  Not if Nathan is with us.  He keeps a record of all the parks and venues he visits and tries to see at least one game in every league.  It will take many years but he is determined one by one to do it.  Tonight we saw the Traverse City Pit Spitters team play.  They are part of the Northwoods League. The park was really nice.  We all got a free T-Shirt and they do all fun activities for the fans and kids in between innings which makes for a fun night.

Headed home to get some rest.  Tomorrow will be another travel day as we head up to Mackinac City.  Excited to see what that is all about!

P.S.  If you prefer just to look at pictures if you click on the first one it will give you a slide show of them.