The Ol' TC

I think I have an exceedingly large crush on Traverse City now that we've spent some time there, and I'm already excited to go back. I'd read quite a bit about the place, but nothing quite prepared me for just how lovely it is up there. The drive wasn't bad at all, except for a slightly boring stretch of farmland in the middle of MI. Then the evergreen forests and rolling hills started, and by the time we were within an hour of the city, we were passing lakes every few minutes.

The city itself is great, too. I'd had a little bit of dread after looking at real estate in the area--it just turned out much of what I saw for sale was unremarkable houses out in the boonies. The neighborhoods in town were full of cobbled streets gorgeous Victorian houses with turrets. Here's a neat gallery of houses and such from the area. We tooled around downtown most of one day, and had several pleasant surprises. There are lots of non-chain, independant stores downtown, which made for a nice blend of everything from cafes to bookstores to breweries. A beautiful, clear river runs right through the downtown area, and we occasionally saw someone drifting along on their innertube, or kayaking down to where it flows into the bay.

Here's where they have the annual Traverse City Film festival, and show independant films the rest of the year.

Scrumptous food and beautiful architechture aside, our best surprises were in in one of the buildings on the main street that had been divided into various small stores. In one particular one, we found a neat used book store, a vintage clothing shop, an indie record store, a gaming/hobbies store that also sells cheeeap used video games, and best of all, taking up most of the basement, a store piled high with vintage music gear and guitars. It was called "Good News Music," so we'd been expecting a hokey religious music store. Nope. Far, far cooler. That building won for sheer volume of neato things under one roof up there.

The Dennos Museum had an exhibit in Rodin's bronze sculptures, which was fabu. I learned more about the lost wax casting process, which was fun.

After the city, we went to a friend's cabin for a couple days. It was right on a lake, and we lazed about at the water's edge.

I hope the job up there for the Boy works out. Even if it doesn't, we're going to live there someday.