Our Summer In Northern Michigan, Life , Liberty, Beaches and Pie

     Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie, and We Journey are the core values at Cherry Republic, the company that we worked for this summer. We like these values and will continue to try to make them our own. 

     Life : Local "We capture and share the vital spirit of cherries and Northern Michigan".  Life in Northern Michigan was full and busy. We spent our work days selling over 200 tart cherry related products at Cherry Republic, in Glen Arbor, Michigan. The store had a record breaking season, and we worked hard with a great group of people. (Once we snuck past Ann Arbor on our way north, we learned that Michiganders are very friendly and didn't hold our OSU Buckeye allegiance against us.) Our days off were filled with exploring Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the surrounding areas.       

Chocolate inside and chocolate outside--the store had an amazing gardener, she even grew chocolate cosmos that actually smelled like chocolate! Each day I would walk through the gardens looking to see what new flowers were blooming.

Time to put my feet up and relax

                       

This was the most perfect day on Lake Michigan for an 8 mile kayak trip!

       Liberty : Self Driven " We work from the heart to touch hearts". Our hearts have been touched by the generous people we've met and the good friends that we've found. Our team was the best. It took teamwork to do all the stocking, sales, bagging and complimentary gift boxing at the store. We even added in a bit of local Northern Michigan nature into each box (pinecones, a piece of birch bark and a fresh sprig of cedar) for the gift recipients to enjoy.  After work, we had the liberty that the long summer days gave us to enjoy beautiful sunsets on Lake Michigan.  (It was still light at 10 pm in June!) Another favorite after work activity was listening to the wonderful local musicians that played acoustic folk music in the Cherry Republic beer garden at the Public House (the restaurant). We also worked in the pub bussing tables a few days this fall, for a change of pace. 

Fun with friends after work!

So many beautiful sunsets

Mark did a lot of muscle building pulling boxes of product into the store

Looking north at the dunes from Empire Beach

        Beaches : Have fun and be good. "Be lighthearted like the breezes, resilient like the sand and fun loving like the waves" All I can say is "WOW!" We were a few miles from Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, which is part of the National Park System. We spent our free time hiking and kayaking, exploring the coastline of Lake Michigan. The water is a sparkling aqua color and there is so much soft beatiful sand! Many days we felt like we were looking at a carribean beach (except tthe water was a bit cooler!). There are huge dunes with colorful flowers, scenic overlooks and miles of pristine beaches to get our toes in the sand.

Look who came to visit and enjoy the dunes and lakeshore

                   

Exploring the dune trails along the lake

          Pie : Generosity " We gratefully share the earth's abundance". I've always been an apple pie kind of girl, until now. At the store we sampled many of our products, and the staff was encouraged to try everything from candy, jams, salsas, barbecue sauces, and more. The company gives back to the community and supports the local farmers. Did we mention cherries? The area has cherry farms all over. We went to pick a few sweet cherries one day. The trees were so loaded that we couldn't stop picking and ended up with over 6 pounds of cherries. The sandy soil grows cherries in abundance! The pub served many delicious things made with cherries, including, of course, cherry pie and cherry ice cream. I got so excited when our manager brought  pies over for the store employees to enjoy, 'true cherry' and cherry blueberry. Mark's favorite ice cream was "pie in the sky", which is cherry ice cream with cherry pie crust bits in it. We also enjoyed wild blackberries and raspberries that we picked along some of the hiking trails.

Cherry Blossoms

There were so many cherries!

         

So yummy!

Looking down at Empire Beach from the top of the bluffs

        The whole area was once covered by oceans and prehistoric corals. When you walk down a public beach everyone has ther heads down looking at the sand. You'd think that you were on Sanibel Island where everyone is looking for seashells, but here they look for Petosky stones (fossilized corals).

         We Journey : "Together as a team, we overcome to reach the big open spaces where we can spread our wings and soar".  We were able to explore Northern Michigan on our time off. We spent a wonderful day on Mackinac Island,  exploring on foot and on a bicycle built for two. The lilacs and the lady slippers were in full bloom. We ate pasties (meat pies) and explored the tunnel of trees on the way back to Glen Arbor. We also journeyed up into the U.P. to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We saw the colorful and unique rock formations by boat and a 10 mile hike, which somehow turned into a 13 mile hike.

Many shades of beautiful lilacs

We've never seen so many lady slippers!

 

                                                        The famous Mackinac Bridge

         

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Lover's Leap ( but there's no place to leap from)

Cool rock formations

          

                                                          

Chapel Rock

                    

     It was a great  summer and an unforgettable addition to our list of adventures! We definitely have to thank Ruth and Dave Chestnut,  and Joan and Rick McCarren for inspiring us to go spend a season in this area. It was also great to visit with them over the summer!

Safe and social this winter

A perfect day in the sun

A perfect sunset at Myrtle Beach taken
by a photographer that we met on the beach

  We have been on our adventure for 3 years now!! My how time flies!! It sure doesn't feel that long since we retired, and started living in our house on wheels (our fifth wheel camper). So far we've had a mountain home, a lake house, a beach house and a central Florida house!

We enjoyed another beautiful fall in Myrtle Beach. We worked for about three weeks at Belk department store again for Black Friday, and walked on the beach every day. We were excited to find live sea stars on the beach this year!

 After leaving Myrtle Beach, we headed down to Florida, parked the camper at Thousand Palms, and drove on down to the Orlando area for a week of relaxation at a resort hotel. We had a prepaid week to use that was about to expire, so we decided to go and stay socially distanced. It was pretty low key due to covid, but it was a nice change of pace for us (we had a king jacuzzi suite larger than our fifth wheel!) 

We then returned to what feels like our winter home at Thousand Palms RV Resort campground. It was great seeing friends we made last year and making new friends this year! Because we could be mostly outside and avoid large gatherings we have felt "safe and social". There weren't any parties, but that is an easy thing to give up. We still had tons of fun! We had a quiet Christmas by ourselves, which was different, and we missed being with family, but we were all healthy and able to be together on Zoom. The campground did prepare a great Christmas meal for us and delivered it to our campsite. 

 A typical weekday at the campground included Kathy spending some time in the fitness center doing yoga for herself, then we had line dancing class (we wore our masks and kept our distance when we were inside), then depending on the day we either played pickleball or twice a week we had a yin yoga class. And that's just the morning. Afternoons could include taking walks on the campground trails and some pool time when it was warm and sunny. We kayaked the beautiful rivers and springs almost every week with friends from the campground. 

Somewhere in there we worked a bit also. We looked around for jobs, but weren't sure what was safe in the middle of the pandemic.  Our manager from last year at Winn Dixie offered us a few hours a week, in the evening, when the store was less busy, mostly to help work his wine aisle. We gave it a try and felt safe enough with our masks in the uncrowded store, so we spent a couple evenings a week re-stocking and organizing the wine shelves. We were mostly enjoying playing retired people at the campground, but when the store pharmacy started doing vaccinations, the manager asked if we would consider more hours. After giving it alot of thought we decided that we wanted to help with the vaccination effort as long as we felt safe doing it. Kathy worked as cashier in the pharmacy and Mark was an "ambassador". He helped people with the paperwork when they checked in for their appointments and answered alot of questions. We appreciated the opportunity to do a bit of patient care again and have a small part in helping people through the pandemic.

  We've also enjoyed spending time with our Wilmington friends,  Debbie & Jack, and Sue & Jim, when we could safely be outside!

We feel so fortunate to have found such a great winter home with wonderful people to share all the fun activities. We plan to return next winter as well, when we hope to be able to have the larger group activities and parties again. 

The weekend before we headed north Kari and Jess came for a short visit! It was so good to see them!! 

On our way north we stopped to visit Ben and Anthony, and got to meet their kitties, Lily and Leo!!! We were also able to congratulate Ben and Anthony on their engagement!!

It was great seeing our kids!!

While kayaking, we were fortunate to see this beautiful and very 
photogenic roseate spoonbill

Campfires and marshmallows with friends

 

Oranges growing
next to our camper

Music in our backyard with 2 great musicians!

We saw this barred owl on the bike trail in Inverness

Loved the red maples blooming alongside the river

A great blue heron in the campground pond

A great egret and the resident duck in the campground pond

These 2 immature white ibis were hanging out in the
campground one morning

This gopher tortoise lives along the trails behind the campground. 
We enjoy seeing all the wildlife right in our own
"back yard"!

This is a pile of turtles that we saw at Silver Springs

After a short stay in Ohio to visit family, our next stop is Glen Arbor, Michigan (if Michigan will let OSU grads in)! We are looking forward to exploring the area!! Until next time, Be Well and Have Fun!