Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Celebrating John's Birthday

Ironton Ferry in rates in 1884
Ironton Ferry today
Sunday was John's birthday, and the weather cooperated for a near perfect 2-day get-away. We had blue skies and temperatures in the 70s for our stay at the Terrace Inn in Bay View, 2 miles north of Petoskey.  On the way up we spotted a sign to Deadman's Hill, where we had a very interesting deep dark woodland hike. Then, as we were on the road from Boyne City to Charlevoix, we were surprised to see a sign: END of ROAD. We hadn't realized that the only way to get where we wanted to go (besides back-tracking a long way) was to take the ferry. What fun. After a 25 minute wait, we joined 3 other cars and some walkers to cross the channel on the 4-car ferry. After more meandering we made it to Bay View, a beautiful one-time Methodist campground with some 200 Victorian homes squeezed into the hills overlooking the Bay. Yesterday we biked round-trip 20+ miles up along the Bay and though some small towns. All-in-all, one of those too-good-to-be-true mini-vacations. Now we're back home to very cold mid July temps.
John in front of the Terrace Inn
One of dozes of large Victorian homes in Bay View