California to Chicago and Michigan by Rail - Traverse City to Holland, Michigan

Today we will be driving south to Holland, Michigan where we will spend our final night together.  After the beautiful evening we had yesterday we were disappointed to see that the clouds had returned and the weather had turned cooler.  We had all day to make the short drive so we headed back to Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore to find the visitors center, which was at the south end of the park.  The visitors center was interesting and we’d wished we had seen it yesterday, but we had started at the north end so we missed it.

From there we drove north to the small town of Glen Arbor, which we had been told was interesting.  Val was looking for a necklace made of Petoskey Stone, which is the state stone of Michigan and is found no other place in the world than the Great Lakes.  It is fossilized coral and is very unique looking.  We walked around town and Val finally found what she was looking for so she was very happy.  We also found a very interesting place called the Cherry Republic where all their products had cherries in them, from candy to cherry salsa and best of all they let you sample everything.  They also had a café and a wine tasting room for tasting cherry wine.  We had lunch at the café and then decided we had better start heading south.

The rest of the day was mostly spent driving, but we did make one stop in Montague, Michigan to see the World's Largest Weather Vane.

The World's Largest Weather Vane

The sun did come out as we drove further south and it turned into a beautiful day.  We arrived in Holland and found our hotel and settled in.  Holland, Michigan is noted for it's Dutch theme and a Tulip Festival every spring.  No one felt like seeing the tourist sites so we opted for dinner at a BBQ place and then ice cream at Captain Sundae’s, which had to be the busiest ice cream place I had ever seen, it seemed like everyone in town was there. 

After that we headed back to the hotel. In the morning Doug and his family will be driving back to Chicago to catch their plane to Los Angeles, and Val, Judy and I will be driving back to Sturgis to spend our last couple of days before catching the train back to California.  We said our final goodbyes to Doug, Janis, Becky and Mandy and called it a night.