Quick Traverse City Trip!

 Last weekend, Gil and I headed up north to Traverse City with our friends, Jon & Tina. We got up there super late on Friday and headed to a cute little place called Brew for some martinis. On Saturday, we headed to the Leelanau Peninsula for some wine tasting.

We made a quick, impromptu stop by Sleeping Bear Dunes. It was windy and cold and rained on and off all day. But still so beautiful, of course!

We were gonna stop by the Cheese Shanty in Leland for lunch, but didn't really think about where we'd eat our sandwiches. Way too cold and rainy to eat outside! We ended up eating in Glen Arbor instead.

Leland

Raining across the lake

Tina making the trek in heels...haha trooper!

 Sunday we watched the Lions lose in overtime at the Jolly pumpkin on Old Mission Peninsula. We also hit two of the wineries beforehand, 2 Lads and Chateau Chantal. Love 2 Lads, one of my favorite views! We drove back home after the game was done.

And when we got home, there was some produce waiting to be picked in the garden! Fun, quick weekend! Oh, how I love Northern Michigan!!

UP! Adventure: Day 3 Tahquamenon Falls

On the third day of our trip, we headed over to Tahquamenon Falls.

First we walked around and took pictures of the falls. There were a lot of stairs!!

 Then we went for a hike. It was such a hot day!

Laila was pretty hot by the end of the hike, so we headed down by the water.

 I was surprised to see so many people playing in the water near some very fast moving parts of the river and near some of the falls. We personally had no desire to die a watery death...so we found a calm spot in the river where Laila could cool off.

 After Tahquamenon, we headed to Sault Ste Marie, where we spent our last night. Yes, it was a whirlwind UP trip.

We didn't have any grand plans for Sault Ste Marie, but wanted to cut off some of our driving time for the following day. We got dinner at West Pier Drive In (which we read had some great burgers) and went down by the Locks to eat. After that, we just walked around and got ice cream and then headed back to our hotel for the night. This was fine with us, because we were exhausted by this point!

In the morning, we headed back home. We were only in the UP for a few days, but with all the driving we were ready to get home. Can't wait for our next trip!

UP! Adventure: Day Two Pictured Rocks

I've always heard that the Pictured Rocks are amazing and I often see the Pure Michigan billboards showing the kayakers around Pictured Rocks. So we knew we wanted to head to Munising for one of our days in the UP.

There were some trails and places in Pictured Rocks National Park that did not allow dogs, so we had to plan around Laila a little more on this day. We just looked at the park webpage for dog friendly locations. We started out the day by checking out Munising Falls.

After that, we went to Miner's Castle. Gorgeous! The water color was Caribbean. 

 After Miner's Castle, we headed to Miner's Beach. This was such a fun part of the day. Laila was a swimming machine. I wish we had grabbed a video of her swimming because it was so cute. She basically fetched a stick out of the water for about an hour. The beach wasn't very crowded and we headed further down, away from people so we didn't have to worry about our dog bugging anyone.  I did take a few shots of Laila at the beach on my phone.

We knew we wanted to do the boat tour of the Pictured Rocks, so Gil figured it would be smart to have Laila exhaust herself swimming beforehand (smart man!). Pictured Rock Cruises offered free pet kennels for people traveling with pets. So Laila took a little nap while we went on the boat. It was about a three hour tour (name that show) because we took the slightly extended trip out to Spray Falls.

Disclaimer: If you do not want to see a bunch of rock pictures, stop reading now!

The Pictured Rocks were really amazing and beautiful. If you ever do the trip, make sure to sit on the right side of the boat for great pictures. The crew was pretty entertaining, the narration was funny, but they gave a lot of cool facts about the rocks as well. 

Ok, here come the rock pictures (we took about a million)...

Spray Falls 

Lighthouse on Grand Island

The boat tour was super touristy, of course, but worth it. There's no other way to see the rocks like that. Now I want to camp at Pictured Rocks. It would be so amazing. During the boat tour, we saw some people high up on the rocks who were hiking and a few people swimming. Maybe next summer??