October 17 - Traverse City, Michigan

The main objective for the day was to do the local Volksmarch, which we started about 10AM after a leisurely breakfast. The start point for the Traverse City Volksmarch started from the Holiday Inn directly on the shore of the bay, and the first part of the walk was to follow the bay shoreline west and north a bit. In the bright fall sunshine the views out over the blue waters of the bay were wonderful.

We ran into a small zoo directly on our path and, reading no instructions to the contrary, we assumed the route led thru the zoo. As it turned out, that assumption was wrong and we got kind of caught inside since there was only one entrance/exit that was open. Still, our detour thru the small zoo was interesting because it featured only animals native to this area of Michigan. We saw elk, bison, and black bear out in the morning sun, but other critters like the lynx were apparently still in their dens because we didn’t see “hide nor hair” of them.

After backtracking our way out of the zoo we passed a small coal-fired power plant that has been decommissioned and will be torn down by next year, hopefully, so if you take this walk don’t be surprised if you don’t see it. And weep not, for you certainly will not have missed much, particularly if they have replaced it by expanding the lakeside park, which I hope is their intention. We continued along the lake for a ways and then turned south and back east thru the city. The downtown area offered a nice variety of stores and certainly seemed busy and vibrant to us when we walked there.

On the other side of the central district we took an irregular loop to come around and return to the finish point. Along the way we saw some houses with unusually vibrant hues (purple and yellow-green, specifically) as well some perfectly gorgeous examples of Victorian homes that were big enough to qualify as mansions, I imagine. The checkpoint was the really quite handsome County Courthouse. A nearby plaque clarified that the courthouse building cost $710 when it was first constructed in the 1800s, $35,000 when it was rebuilt in 1900, and 7 million dollars when it was restored in 1975! It was a graphic illustration of the power of inflation, to be sure. The final segment returned to the lake shore and turned east to re-pass the zoo and end at the Holiday Inn. We both enjoyed this walk very much as it criss-crossed Traverse City in such a manner as to give a look at each aspect of the city as well as wonderful views of the lake.

Since we now knew where the Culvers restaurant was, we drove there for lunch and had yet another great meal with a Cherry Delight sundae for dessert—delicious! After lunch we leisurely drove up the peninsula that forms the western side of Traverse Bay and, after zigzagging thru the town on the northern tip, we followed the road to where it ended at a beautiful old lighthouse. The lighthouse and the foghorn house nearby had museum exhibits on the history of the lighthouse and the keepers thereof, and we enjoyed those very much. The old foghorns could be easily heard up to 9 miles away, and the keeper’s families recalled running for the basement when the foghorn was getting ready to blow—apparently staying in the lighthouse’s upstairs living levels while the foghorn was blasting was just unbearably noisy. As it was I wondered how much hearing was lost due to the foghorn blasts back in those days.

I had earlier made the mistake of showing Monika some polished Petoskey Rocks at one of the gift stores and explaining how we looked for these rocks when I was child visiting my Aunt Ella in Port Sanilac, Michigan. We were near the Petoskey area where these rocks are found, so Monika naturally started to search for them along the beach. This proved about as fruitless as our search for amber along the Baltic Sea in the Germany trip (see Wanderung 2), but it was still fun. Monika found one very nice fossil impression in a piece of slate (?) and I found one rock that might, just might, be a Petoskey Rock; I’ll have to polish it to see for sure. We were finally chased back to the truck by the really cold wind blowing straight off the lake and gratefully turned the heater on for the drive back.

As we drove down the western shore of the peninsula we had mostly views of the forested countryside combined with occasional glimpses of Lake Michigan beyond or one of the many inland lakes in this region. Coming back thru Traverse City we filled up with gasoline and bought some necessary groceries. I was relieved to find that the truck could still get 18+ miles per gallon without the trailer, because with the trailer I could only manage 11-14 mpg—ouch! The differences in mileage when towing the trailer up to this point seemed to be largely due to having headwinds vs. crosswinds vs. tailwinds, but I was certain that driving in the mountains would also adversely affect the mileage when that time came. After an evening fire outside we retired inside and Monika continued crocheting a yellow jersey for the U.S. Postal Service Bicycling Bear we bought earlier on the trip—he needed the yellow jersey because he obviously was a Tour De France winner and so we named him “Lance Bearstrong”.