Friday, July 22, I was up at 8:00 and sat out with my coffee in a stupor. I needed a jacket on this 60 degree cool morning. I finally took a walk around the campground. It is filling up for the weekend. Back home Paul and Marge were sitting out. Paul mentioned Mullet Lake Golf Course. We'll have to check it out. They enjoyed a Steel Drum bank in Cheboygan park last night. Paul showed me a completed bear he had carved. His hobby is wood carving. The bear was just smaller than a football and every detail was perfect.After breakfast we went west on M-68 stopping in Alanson at Second Hand Man Antiques at US 31 North. Then we continued on to Petoskey where we pulled in to a lakeside park on Little Traverse Bay. Once again we were blown away by the beauty of the lakeshore here. On this picture-perfect, 75-degree day (65 degrees here with the cool breeze off of Lake Michigan) the water was deep Mediterranean blue. Two to three foot white caps were rolling in. Boats danced in the marina in the harber below our three-story perch on the cliffs. A light beacon was on the end of the breakwater, gleaming white with a red top. We took the four tall flights of stairs down to the beach where the gulls circled us for handouts.
We walked quite a ways around the harbor to the far side of the big clock tower standing guard over the marina. We finally got around to the jetty and walked all the way to the end of it. A couple hunting for Petoskey Stones on shore had two black and brown Dachshunds with them. The dogs barked their fool heads off at us like only weiner dogs can.
Petoskey Stones are small pieces of much larger coral reefs that lived in warm, shallow seas, when the part of North America we call michigan was positioned near the equator. Over time these reefs became buried in sediment. Eventually, the continent drifted north and underwnet periodic glacial phases. The advancing glaciers of the latest ice age scraped away the layers of earth that had settled atop these reefs, exposing them once again, 380 million years after their formation, fossils of these great coral reefs remain. Though theses ancient corals are present incland under the soil, they are most accessible along the lakeshore. Here, ice and wave actions erodes the reefs, breaking chunks away and grinding them into smooth and smaller pieces. Digging among the gravel beds along the beaches around Petoskey and Charlevoix will reward the searcher with handfuls of these fossil stones. Polishing reveals the pattern even more vividly. Each dark spot in a petoskey stone represents the mouth of an individual coral polyp. The lines radiating from the mouth are tentacles the animal used to draw in plankton, which it consumed. Corals lived side by side, giving the stone its multi-spotted, six-sided design. When we got out by the light beacon kids were smimming off the end of the breakwater. Big breakers crashed over the wall out on the far end. You had to time your passing just right to avoid getting a shower. The lake is so clear you can see to the bottom along the jetty. We hunted for Petoskey Stones on the bayshore but lunch was a stronger pull. As we walked back we saw an overhead arch displaying "Downtown" across the bay road and up the hill. So we took the big staircase up and found ourselves in the bustling downtown of Petoskey. As we climbed up Petoskey Street we ducked in to Morning Star "Petoskey Stone and Jewelry Design." They polish the Petoskey Stones and make one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. Bob bought me a pair of earrings to celebrate my upcoming August birthday. You can see the coral's six-sided design with a spot in the center of each.
By this time lunch was really calling us. We stopped in the nearest quaint food establishment around the corner "Papa Lou's Pizza Pub." Bob had Meatball Grinder with thinly sliced layers of meatball piled high on a toasted bun. I had Papa Lou's Salad with cashews, dried Michigan cherries and raspberry vinegiarette. The cherries were so plump and juicy you could hardly tell they were dried. After lunch we walked up the street and did what all Michigan tourists do--got fudge at Murdick's Fudge & Caramel Corn Shoppe. Well I did. Bob had a Michigan cherry chocolate chip ice cream cone. I tried the chocolate cherry fudge. We enjoyed both at a shady bench outside in a grassy park area.
We cruised the streets to find an antique store but never did. So we descended to the shore and strolled back to the truck perched high on the bluff. We got crackers out of the truck and fed the brazen gulls. Then we drove across Hwy 31 and through downtown and found and antique store at Howard and Rose Lanes. They had lots of old golf items from Scotland. A cute golf-ball-and-club bakelite nightlight for $275.00 caught our eye but we left it there at that price. We retraced our route back to Oden and stopped in an antique store there. They had some fun things but we passed on all of it. We were back home by 5:00 or so. We got a paper at the office. When we pulled up to the trailer Paul gold us to check our right front jack; it had collapsed. That was the first time that had ever happened. Bob soon had it back in order. We sait out in the cool breeze and read the paper then came in for a snack later on.
It's 7:30 p.m. and 78.8 degrees (but it feels more like 68 since the humidity is gone now.)