We drove out to Indianapolis for a family wedding on a July weekend, and had another wedding the following weekend in Cincinnati. In between, we decided that we would head up to Traverse City, Michigan, where the Nancy’s sister has a house, as well as visiting friends from DC who spend their summers an hour further north in Boyne City along Lake Charlevoix. It was a relaxing few days.
The drive up took about eight hours; we passed through Kalamazoo at about noon on Sunday and decided to stop for lunch. Based on guidebook information, our first choice for a meal was
Food Dance, but only breakfast is served in Sunday and besides it was going to be a 45 minute wait – plainly this is the place to be on Kalamazoo for Sunday brunch. So we wandered down the street and ate at one of the outside tables at
Olde Peninsula, which advertises itself as Kalamazoo’s first brew pub. Nancy had a reuben sandwich (it was OK); I liked the salmon cooked with a Beer-B-Que glaze. To drink I had their own Midnight Stout, which was a great beer. I liked the beer so much that we picked up a couple of growlers (the double IPA and the Sunset Red) as house gifts for the hosts with whom we would be staying during the week.
We drove northward on US 131 and reached Boyne City in the late afternoon. Our friends live in an improved old logger’s cabin which, they told us, like several other houses near them, had been dragged across the frozen-over lake in the winter.
Lake Charlevoix was directly across the road, and the weather was plenty warm enough to dip into the water for a swim – cold but not nearly so cold as Stone Pond where we will be swimming in New Hampshire in a couple of weeks! Our friends grilled some lamb ribs and locally–made sausages for dinner; then we enjoyed watching the sun set over the far end of the lake which was very nice despite the clouds
