7/26 to Charlevoix and Traverse City, MI

Last night, we rented a car to do some grocery shopping and to explore a little today.  We headed south from Petoskey on Highway 31 which would take us to Charlevoix and Traverse City.  The route followed the lake for the most part but more inland than we expected.

Our first stop was in Charlevoix.  This town is on the east side of the lake and opens onto Lake Charlevoix.  It is a quaint town with lots of shops and a large marina on Round Lake that spills into Lake Charlevoix.  The waterfront has a fountain and lots of boats to look at.

 In the center of the marina waterfront, they have a trout habitat.  It demonstrates the trout habitat and behavior from the more elevated streams and rivers to the lakes. 

Charlevoix is also known for Mushroom Houses.  From the 1930's forward, Earl Young, an architect designed and developed the land and built what became known as Mushroom Houses.  His philosophy was somewhat like Frank Lloyd Wright that homes should meld into the environment.  He used local stone and very few linear accents.  There are over 2 dozen of the homes in the town including a restaurant.  Here are a few we toured.

We headed to Traverse City, the Cherry Capital of United States.  Over 80% of the nation's cherries are grown here, thanks to Peter Dougherty who planted his first cherry tree in this area  in 1852.  The cherry industry was born.  We passed orchard after orchard after orchard of cherries.

In addition to buying cherries, you can buy pies, sodas, beers, jams, candies, and cherry fudge.  I love cherries and may soon turn into one.  Just today, I had a salad with cherry dressing and dried cherries, some fresh cherries and a Grand Traverse Pie Company ABC (apple, blueberry, cherry) pie.

In Traverse City, we were impressed with this graphic of the snowfall in Leelanau County in 2013-2014.   20 feet, no thank you.

Along the highway, we learned that we were at the 45th parallel.  We will have to watch our GPS to see when we cross this with the Hydrophilic.

 Tomorrow, we hope to head for Northport, MI.  The last census there was 500 people.