Northern Michigan Weekend Recap

Most of Ted's extended family lives in the Petoskey/Harbor Springs area of northern Michigan. It's about a three and a half hour drive from our house in Grand Rapids, so we don't get up there to visit as often as we'd like. Memorial Day weekend was the perfect opportunity, so we packed up Friday afternoon and headed up for barbecue and family fun.

If you've never been to the area, it's full of water and gorgeous panoramic views of the bay. And money too of course. It's fun to drive around and look at all the massive lakefront houses and the cool boats in the harbor. 

These pictures are from another trip a couple years ago, but are a good representation of downtown Harbor Springs. The pharmacy is owned by another branch of the Kelbel family, but it's cool to see our name on a sign.

On Saturday, we made a side trip down to Traverse City to visit my friend Emily from college. She works for a store called Nest and they have some really cool stuff.

The store is full of pretty decorative vases, lamps, furniture, art and everything home decor you can think of. 

We also went to this cool restaurant called Red Ginger for drinks and appetizers, and visited a store called Cherry Republic for wine tasting and all things cherry.

We ended up buying a bottle of Riesling and the hard cherry cider. We tasted practically everything on the menu and bought glasses of "cherry Palmer" and a cherry root beer to walk around outside with. Fun stuff. 

We also did a little shopping at a fun store called Sturgeon River Pottery. They have tons of the obvious pottery, but they also carry a lot of interesting outdoor decorations and garden items.

We got this cool weather vane for our backyard to honor Ted's MSU obsession. This is the best picture I could find online, so I will have to take one of it actually in use in our yard. 

Anyway, we had a nice relaxing weekend, and had the opportunity to go to the cemetery to see Ted's dad and grandpa's grave sites. We were glad to have time to spend with family and friends and each other.