Summer Vacation

(getting caught up here...) We spent a week at the Fitzsimmons family cottage outside Frankfort, Michigan. Not NEARLY enough time. We caught Fitz's youngest sister Lynn and her family for a couple of hours before they headed home. Fitz's brother Michael came up for a few days, plus his youngest son was already staying elsewhere in town. Sister Beth was there the whole time, with her family, and sister Sue came up with her husband, and two of their three children showed up for our last day and a half.

Rebecca joined us; Brian elected to stay home and work; he'll catch up the the Fitz side of the family at his cousin Joey's wedding next month, in St. Louis.

Highlights: I took Bleriot, of course. The first day I was loafing around, knitting, and realized that I had forgotten some knitting needles. This necessitated a trip to the yarn store in Beulah (26 miles round trip), but it was mostly on the Betsie Valley Trail, which I'll ride all day, every day. It is that pretty.



Bleriot rolled over 5000 miles during that errand.

Rebecca and I rode over to Elberta for the Farmer's Market, only to discover it was on Thursday, not Tuesday. We consoled ourselves with a trip the the smokehouse in Frankfort for some smoked whitefish. It started to rain. We got wet. Frankfort and the Congregational Summer Assembly being not a large place, of course we ran into no fewer than three folks that knew us (not relatives, I might add) and felt sorry for us. We rode home and enjoyed the whitefish :-)

Rode around Crystal Lake once. Fitz and Rebecca played golf several days. I went to the beach, swam the line (1/4 mile), then sat and visited and knitted. One day it was pretty choppy. I've got a high tolerance for chop, but this was just about over the edge.

We had a fire at the Pt Betsie lighthouse and made s'mores.

Then Fitz, Rebecca, and I took the bikes up to the Old Mission Peninsula north of Traverse City and did a 20+ mile ride there. Rebecca isn't a cyclist, but she wanted to come along, and was a really good sport about it. We stopped at Two Lads Winery and did a wine tasting (lots of wineries on the peninsula), and I amused myself by adding things to my Carradice Barley bag (fresh dill, bottle of wine, the lunch and snacks I was already carrying...) It was really pretty.









Like I said, a week was not nearly long enough!