Tahquamenon Rhymes with Phenomenon

We had such a fun day today!  We started with a tour of the Kilwin's kitchen in Petoskey, Michigan.  Petoskey is where the original Kilwin's (a chocolate/ice cream/fudge shop) is and they do very short tours of how their sweet treats are made.  We wish we had more time in Petoskey because it seemed like a really cute town.

The chocolate on the right is used for truffles

Taffy

125 pounds of marshmallow

Eating our chocolate at the end of the tour

After Petoskey, we drove a few more miles until we went across the Mackinac Bridge (pronounced "Mackinaw" for the non-Michigan folk).  This is supposed to be one of the scariest bridges to drive over, but Steve said it wasn't that bad.  Here's the video of us driving over it!

Our first stop on the UP was to Oswald's Bear Ranch in Newberry.  This is a black bear rescue and they have 47 bears, 4 of which are cubs.  For an extra $10, you can get your picture taken with a cub while you pet it.  This literally lasts about 30 seconds, but it was still cool to say I've pet a bear.  So there!  :-)  This is a pretty quick stop, but definitely a fun one.

Feeding and petting a bear cub!

Bear cub who posed for the camera

One of the bigger females

Another female

After the bear ranch, we went to the upper Tahquamenon Falls (where we saw the phrase that is this post's title).  There are several viewing platforms for the falls and then if you feel like going up and down 94 steps (which I recommend), you can get up close and personal with them!

Upper Tahquamenon Falls

Us at the falls

We had an early dinner at the Tahquamenon Falls Brewery.  They only had 4 beers on tap and I really liked the red and Steve really liked their stout.  I also enjoyed their root beer!

Tahquamenon Falls Brewery Sampler

After dinner, we drove out to the lower Tahquamenon Falls.  They were not as impressive as the upper falls, but definitely very pretty!

Lower Tahquamenon Falls

We ended the evening with a quick drive to Whitefish Point to go dip our toes in Lake Superior, and take pictures in our new Michigan shirts.  ;-)  Tomorrow we finally get to our first National Park site of the trip, and we're so excited!

Whitefish Point Lighthouse

I'm in Lake Superior - excuse the goofy pose, it was quite painful walking on rocks.

We couldn't pass up these fun Michigan shirts!

Happy Independence Day!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!  We spent the 4th in Ludington, MI, with Steve's mom who is here for the summer.  We started by going to Jamesport Brewing Company and having lunch and a sampler there.  We've been here before, but Big Hart Brewery is closed on Mondays, so we were left with no choice.  Jamesport's beers are still very good though, especially the Altbier and the Strong Ale.

Next we walked downtown a little more to go to House of Flavors (affectionately known as Park Dairy to some) for some ice cream!  :-)

After ice cream we walked around downtown Ludington briefly, but got too hot before the 4th of July parade started, so we ended up leaving after we finished our treat.  Then we stopped at Henry's Landing to have a short but great visit with Steve's cousin Tess and her husband Josh.  If you're ever in the Ludington area, and need a place to stay, definitely hit up Henry's Landing!  While it was a great visit with Tess and Josh, we're sad we didn't get to see anyone else on that side of the family!  Hopefully we see you all at Katie and Dave's wedding in a couple weeks!

After visiting Tess and Josh, we decided to call it a day so we went back to the house where Steve made cookies with the flour we bought from the DeZwaan windmill and we had a delicious spaghetti dinner with Steve's mom.  We also took a walk around Steve's parents' property and saw the seedling I received when I graduated in December 2014.  Steve's parent's have taken great care of it and it seems to be thriving!

Boats and Fireworks

Welcome to Day 4's blog!  Today was such a fun day and the perfect way to end our time in Holland on this trip!  My aunt and uncle took us out on their boat today and we went over to Saugatuck.  We had a nice picnic lunch on the boat and then the cousins rowed the dinghy into Saugatuck so we could do a little shopping.  Saugatuck is a really cute little beach town, and it's always nice to visit.  Even better, it's always such a treat to get a boat ride in with my family!  We almost had to row in the big boat back to the slip because one of the engines died twice while coming back!  My uncle was able to fix the fuse and we got back just fine.

The Sheriff (aka my cousin Nick) stopped by to say 'hi!'

Two Uncle Sams on the boat ride (me and my cousin Alyssa)

Steve's boat selfie with everyone!

After we got home from the boat, we went to Captain Sundae again, which is our last time for this trip.  Sad.  After Captain Sundae, we went over to my cousin Dave's house and got to visit with several cousins of mine and watch my cousins Dave and Nick give one heck of a fireworks show!

Most of my cousins

Nick & Jordan rigging up the fireworks show

Sadly, our time in Holland has come to an end for this trip and it's time to move on to more adventures.  Thank you everyone in Holland who spent time with us - even if it was only briefly - we appreciate any time we get to spend with our family!  Thank you to my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kelly for letting us be their house guests and taking us out on their boat!  I just told Steve this may have been one of my most favorites trips to Holland - we had a blast!

Windmolen & Bier

I didn't get to blog yesterday because we got home too late from hanging out with my cousins and my friend Jill.  So here's the rundown of what we did yesterday...

Holland, MI, has some Dutch roots and in the 34 years I have been alive and coming to Michigan almost every year, I have never been to the DeZwaan windmill which actually came over from the Netherlands in 1964.  This year, we finally went to Windmill Island with my Aunt Lisa.  Funny story, my mom and her sister (Aunt Lisa) feel the need to fight over who pays for things like meals and admission into Windmill Island.  When we got there, I knew Aunt Lisa would try to pay for us so I sent Steve ahead to beat her to it.  Sure enough, Aunt Lisa figured out we were trying to be sneaky, so she and Steve started sprinting to the ticket booth.  Pretty sure Steve threw an elbow because he ended up winning.  :-)  Anyway, Windmill Island is a cute little park with pretty gardens, the windmill, and then Dutch-themed buildings you can explore.  We saw some Dutch dancing in front of the windmill and then took the tour of the still-working windmill.

Cool Dutch organ

DeZwaan Windmill

After the windmill, we went to Grand Haven with Alyssa (my cousin) to meet Jill for some bar-hopping.  Jordan, Faye, Nick, and Becca all met us out as well (my cousins and their significant others).  We were able to hit two brew pubs while we were there:  Grand Armory Brewing and Oddside Ales.  Oddside was not our favorite, and Grand Armory was very good.  I highly recommend the Nutter Your Business - it's a peanut butter stout and it was so yummy!

Oddside Ales Sampler

My cousin Alyssa, Steve, me, Jill, my cousin Nick and his girlfriend Becca

Grand Armory Sampler

Smitten with the Mitten

Day 2 of vacation and it was a fun day!  The hotel we stay at in Ohio is about 15 minutes away from Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  We've been to this park twice before and we thought since we were so close, we'd do one of our favorite hikes there, to Brandywine Falls, to start our day.  This is a very short, easy hike with only a couple flights of steps and it's only about a quarter-mile one-way.  Fun fact of the day:  Brandywine Falls is the second tallest waterfall in Ohio.

Us at Brandywine Falls

Brandywine Falls

After Brandywine, we started our trek to "The Mitten," and our first stop was to HopCat in Grand Rapids to meet Steve's cousin Nikki for lunch.  We had a great visit with Nikki who showed us some adorable pictures of baby Parker!  Definitely get the crack fries at HopCat!

Visit with Nikki

After lunch with Nikki, we didn't get too far because two doors down from HopCat was Grand Haven Brewing Company, so...

Grand Haven Brewing Sampler

After our sampler, we headed to Holland to meet up with my family.  My Aunt Lisa took us to Holland State Park to see Big Red and then we had dinner and of course we went to Captain Sundae (our favorite place for ice cream in Holland) where my hardest decision today was to choose between getting a Tommy Turtle or a Peanut Butter Shipwreck.  Shipwreck won.

Us with Aunt Lisa at Big Red

Big Red Lighthouse

We ended the evening at my cousin David's house for a visit with his family and he treated us to Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout.  This beer has a 100% rating out of 2,000+ reviews on ratebeer.com.  This beer definitely deserves that rating - it was delicious and I don't even like stouts!

Yes, this was delicious

What a fun day we had catching up with some family members today!  We have a few more adventures planned over our next couple days in Holland.

Long Live the Lizard!

Vacation started today with a 7ish-hour drive from Baltimore to Richfield, Ohio.  We're on our way to Michigan (and several other states) to visit family, friends, brewpubs, and of course, parks.  We try to go to Michigan every other year to see family and when we do, it's always tradition to stop at Winking Lizard in Peninsula, Ohio.  If we lived in the area, we would probably go to this bar/restaurant as often as we go to the brewery by our house.  Winking Lizard has great food, a real live iguana, and a boatload of beers from around the world.  They always have many beers on tap and then even more beers in bottle.  We usually share a sampler of whatever sounds good.  Tonight included Great Lakes Brewing Dortmunder Gold (yum!), Great Lakes Brewing Lake Erie Monster, Left Hand Brewing Sawtooth Nitro, Troegs Cultivator Bock, and a bonus Bells Oberon which the bartender gave to us by accident, but we didn't complain.  Pictured below is our sampler with the iguana in the background and how can you not love a bar adorned with Christmas Story leg lamps???

Short and sweet blog today since we spent most of the day driving.  Tomorrow gets much more fun though!  We can't wait to get to the Mitten tomorrow!

Beer sampler and the iguana on the branch in the background!

National Park Service Hidden Gems

I know it's been a while since I posted but I had to gather a lot of old pictures in order to come up with some content to talk about before our next trip.  I came up with several ideas for various blog posts in between our trips, and the hidden gems in the National Park Service is one of them!  When people think about National Parks, places like Yellowstone and Grand Canyon come to mind - the beautiful, grandiose parks that everyone knows about.  Don't get me wrong, these are fantastic to see, but when you don't know there are over 400 sites included in the National Park Service, you're missing out on some really cool places.  Steve and I came up with our top 5 hidden gems...

#5 - Lowell National Historical Park

Lowell is a water-powered textile factory/mill and the reason it made our hidden gem list is because we had extremely low expectations for it, and quite frankly we thought it would be really boring.  We were wrong, and very happy about that!  There are several buildings you are able to walk through that are all museums now, one of the buildings includes an entire room of loom machines.  They had only a few of them running when we were there and it was so loud that they require you to wear earplugs while walking through that part of the building.  Knowing how loud it was with only a few machines running, I couldn't imagine the noise with several hundred running that were in the room!  Lowell is pretty much a small town so there are also streetcars you can ride on to get to various parts of the park, which was a cool perk.  If you're collecting NPS stamps like us, the streetcars each have their own stamp!  We also took a canal tour all around Lowell, which is a guided tour with a ranger talking about the different buildings we see along the way.

Loom machine

Steven, T.R. (another National Park junkie), and me on a streetcar

On the boat tour - there are some very low bridges to go under!

#4 - Chickasaw National Recreation Area

Chickasaw is one we just went to in March.  We were pleasantly surprised by this one because it's not like most of the NRA's.  If you read about the Utah trip, you know that NRA's aren't usually that exciting for us since we don't own a boat.  Chickasaw has a good amount of hiking available, which is our favorite activity to do in a park.  The best trail to do is a very short, flat hike to Little Niagara.  The name isn't lying to you, it's not a tall or very wide waterfall at all, but it's just pretty and serene.

Little Niagara

#3 - Rainbow Bridge National Monument

We were just at Rainbow Bridge at the end of March.  It's a very impressive natural bridge and it makes our list mostly because it is so hard to get to; it sort of embodies the definition of a hidden gem!  In order to get to it, you have to take a couple-hour boat ride on Lake Powell which is part of Glen Canyon NRA.  You can do a boat tour like we did, or you can take a private boat to the bridge.  If you do a private boat trip, it sounds like there is some really awesome ice cream at the Dangling Rope marina.  I was very sad our boat tour didn't stop there! Once you get to the dock, there's still about a mile hike that is relatively easy to do before you reach the bridge.  The hike itself is through Bridge Canyon which is pretty as well.

Steve and me at Rainbow Bridge

#2 - Fort Frederica National Monument

Steve and I had no idea what to expect here and we were blown away by this site!  Fort Frederica was a settlement from the 1740's and the people who lived there kept surprisingly great records!  There's not much of the town to see besides foundation remains of the various buildings.  But every building had a story about who lived there, what their occupation was, what various parts of the house were used for, etc.  No one famous lived there (or at least no one I recognized), but that didn't matter.   We were just so surprised how great their records were from that long ago and that's what helped make the Fort Frederica story so interesting.  There's also a little sub-site a few miles away of the Bloody Marsh battlefield where the Spanish and the British fought briefly; seven lives were lost.

Fort Frederica

#1 - Pipestone National Monument

This is by far our favorite hidden gem!  We went to Pipestone when we drove across the country in 2012.  This park site is sort of like two parks in one.  There's the historical part of it that explains about the American Indians who quarried pipestone to make pipes.  It's still an active quarry today and there are people onsite who make pipes and other crafts out of the pipestone that they obtain in the park.  Then, there's also a very easy walk on a nature trail that takes you through woods and a pretty Minnesota prairie setting that ends at a beautiful waterfall - Winniwassa Falls.  I distinctly remember when leaving this park the first words out of Steve's mouth were, "this site is why the park service exists, because of hidden gems like Pipestone."  See - we've come full circle!  :-)

Winniwassa Falls

Honorable Mention - Frederick Law Olmstead National Historical Site

As of our trip to Utah in March, we have now been to 200 out of the 400+ sites.  I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to come up with a top 5 list of hidden gems so we had to have an Honorable Mention as well.  That was still hard to do because there are so many awesome places to see!  Frederick Law Olmstead NHS is a house and grounds tour of the gentleman who designed Central Park and other parks/gardens.  The tour also includes a walk-through of the building where park design happened, how they stored many photos, and how they filed park plans (which was chaotic!).  One reason this makes the Honorable Mention is because it had a little piece of "home" in the tour.  As we were leaving the building where all the designing happened, we noticed a framed design on the wall and quickly figured out it was of the grounds for the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore, which is where Steve's high school graduation was held (and where I really wanted to get married because of the crazy long aisle, but I digress...).

Frederick Law Olmstead National Historical Site

I hope you enjoyed our top five hidden gems, plus a bonus gem!  These just happened to be our favorite, but as I said earlier, there are so many cool things to see and learn about in the National Park System.  Find your park and enjoy!