Much needed break

Last week, we took a much-needed vacation for the Mr's birthday.  I've been working my brain into mush and he's had a big work project he's been involved in so we both needed the down time.  We returned to the familiar haunts of Traverse City, MI where we enjoyed some of our favorite places.

We decided to stay out of the downtown area this year and we had sunny weather for a majority of the time which meant starting a few of our days doing morning yoga in the backyard.

We brought our paddling gear with us since we saw we'd have a few good days to get it in.

There are a few stories but I'll save that for tomorrow.

It truly pains us to know that this could likely be the last season for Hoxsie's Farm Market since it's for sale.

It was the first thing kind of welcoming you to the general Traverse City area coming in on M72 and when you saw its old truck full of pumpkins, you couldn't help but get the warm fuzzies.  The thought of that going away in the name of progress, killed my spirit a little.  When I saw the listing, I immediately screamed: "we need to buy that!"  The Mr quickly reminded me that we know nothing about farming but I told him we could learn.  Well, we don't exactly have a million bucks lying around but if y'all could get a million people to donate $1 to the cause, I will give you a free pie in exchange for your generosity which usually cost about $10-14 so that's a pretty good return, right?

We had to continue the tradition with our annual viewing of...

For once, we got to see Leland/Fishtown on a sunny day!  It's usually cold, windy and sometimes rainy so we were glad to see it on a rare bright October day!

The birthday boy has two things he wants to do on his birthday in the general area...a paddle on Crystal Lake and lunch at The Cherry Hut.

You can see why they call it Crystal Lake.  I swear I have never seen water so friggin' clear in my life.

We followed it up with a late day drive at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore along Pierce Stocking Drive.  Unfortunately nowhere near peak.  We only lucked out on that front one trip out of four.

Of course, you can't not go to farmers markets...

...or pumpkin patches.

We're not wine drinkers but I always like seeing fruits on the vine.

It's always nice to take a break from shopping downtown to sit on the boardwalk on the Boardman River.

One thing TC does big...Halloween.  It is not uncommon to see massive Halloween displays like this one on some random person's house.  If we had kids, we would literally drive up here and stay Halloween weekend just to take them trick or treating.

Of course, when you have a fire pit, s'mores are always on tap.

The morning we left, the deer came to bid us farewell.

It went by way too fast and we both agree that next time, no paddling.  Tomorrow's post will explain some of that but more that it just sucked so much time away from the day.  Each paddle was 3 hours and that didn't include set up and packing.  Before you knew it, the day got away from you and we said we felt like we needed an extra few days because we didn't get to go see our favorite town of Frankfort because of it.  Lesson learned that we need closer to 8-10 nights when we go if we take the board/yak.

Now we're back to business as usual.

Where was your last vacation?


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