Petosky and Charlevoix, Michigan

 6-16-2021

I woke up this morning at 7:45 and it was 49 degrees.  Very chilly.  I got up and turned the furnace on, and went back to bed for another hour!  It had warmed up to 59 by then.  But it turned out to be another beautiful day up here, I think the high was 70.  We didn't leave the campground until almost 11:00, and we headed back north to Petosky and Charlevoix.  Both of these towns are very cute, clean, beach towns, lots of flowers line the main highway all the way through town.  Most of the towns of any size in Michigan have hanging pots of flowers lining at least the downtown area.  I think it says a lot about the pride the residents have in their city, I wish my home town would do this.

Petoskey sits at the mouth of Little Traverse Bay, while we are camped on Grand Traverse Bay.  

If you enlarge this photo, you can see where the open water goes through.

Joe finally found us a swan, this was in a little lake north of Petoskey, before we turned around.

We had passed the spot where we found the petoskey stones in 2019, but decided to drive on through town, then come back.  This is the other place we tried that year, where we clambered over the boulders, and the water slammed into us.  And we didn't find any stones.  That was the first spot we tried then.

We didn't even attempt this spot.  So we drove up, around and through the streets of town, had lunch, then headed to the other spot.  There are steps down to the water, which was good, but we had to climb over some tree branches once we got to walking the beach.  We had high hopes for this place, but no luck today.  There is a mossy scum along most of the beach from the pollen from the trees, and all the rocks look the same in the water, which is the easiest place to spot the stones.  We spent an hour there, but never found a single petoskey stone.  We have a little of this algae at our campground, but not as much as there was here.

We gave up, and headed toward the campground, through Charlevoix.  We did find some charlevoix stones on that beach.  We passed the place we thought probably should be Catalina's next residence, plenty of room for the horses she needs, and for her to ride.  This is the Bay Harbor Equestrian Club, very beautiful setting.

We had passed the "Old Dixie Highway" on our way into town, and Joe decided he needed to drive that.  And he found a dirt road too.  That dead-ended, so back to Dixie, then he found another side road that took us to the beach.  This turned out to be a real find!  

There were a few people walking, one lady laying on the beach that Joe thought was a dead body.  But one guy had a little bucket and was picking up rocks, so I asked him if he was finding anything.  He said, oh yeah.  I asked if he found any petoskey stones, and he said, yeah, they were all over out there.  "Here, I will find you one," he said.  And he did.  Then, "here's another one."  He gave us both of them.  So we got serious about looking.  We finally found a couple apiece, but we don't seem to have the eye for them yet.  But the beach did have a lot of pretty, interesting rocks, so we gathered part of a bucket full.  And we plan to return tomorrow.  

Joe took 3 pictures of me washing the sand out of my shoes, and he never did get my skinny side!

We spent about 1 1/2 hours here, with plans to come back tomorrow.  I also plan to take some ibuprophen before we leave the RV.  Walking on the rocks, and in the sand, wore us out.  We will probably go to bed as soon as it gets dark (maybe 10:30).  We do not like this time zone!

Joe wasn't able to get satelline TV here, but he does get some stations on the antennae.  He was getting stations out of Wisconsin, Green Bay, we think.  However, tonight, he lost some of those channels for some reason, so he is really limited in what he can watch.

The price of gas continues to climb.  We were paying $2.99 last week, this week in lower Michigan it's $3.19.  I hope it stops there, we have lots of miles to go.  Our only plan tomorrow is to back to our beach, then come back and start getting to move on Friday.