Stonington

Friday in the UP is behind us.  It's 6:45 in the morning on Saturday as I start to write this, and I'm trying not to listen to the noise of the lobby and coffee shop right around the corner from our suite.  It hasn't woken me up during our stay here, but it's a lot to have to hear early in the morning.  If only this hotel had a doorway to close between the lobby and this wing of rooms.  Oh wait, they do.  Sigh.  I've already written a bad review on TripAdvisor and will argue with Conrad if he considers staying here again.  And yes, I did talk to them about this two days ago when it first happened.  So much for customer feedback, right?

Enough of that, though, Peter (and no, I'm not naming the hotel, but if you ever come up to Conrad's hometown, ask me where NOT to stay, and I will tell you). Let's get back to yesterday.

Two days ago we had grand ambitions of a drive over to St. Ignace and the ferry to Mackinac Island.  By yesterday morning, that had downgraded significantly.  We had breakfast with Karen at a new place in town (generous portions for the most part, but my breakfast burrito was mostly potato instead of egg) (I swear, this post is not just a litany of complaints), then spent time in the room doing some paperwork things that needed to be done.  It was after 1:00 when Conrad and I finally got ourselves going for a drive.  Mackinac Island?  Nope.  The Stonington Peninsula.

Yeah, not very ambitious.  A drive to a lighthouse at Peninsula Point. 

A nice drive, mind you, and the lighthouse was a lovely little setting. 

Everything so green there.  We were able to climb up the stairs inside the lighthouse

and take in the views from there. 

Lovely.  Back in the car, we headed through the tunnel of trees to the paved road, then past fields and occasional houses.  There was something about the green space that invited, and it would have been fantastic to stroll or run through those places.  Alas, aside from most of it being private land, I can only imagine what sort of ticks a person could pick up among those tall grasses and such!

We left the Stonington Peninsula behind us and meandered through the nearby communities, admiring some of the homes and gardens that we rolled past.  We headed on into Escanaba and picked up a few things needed for a night-in in the hotel room.  Once back at the hotel, we headed to the bar for a happy hour drink.  We've been enjoying the Mammoth Gin, a Michigan brand, and for all that we have had issues with the hotel, the bar has had good service and good drinks.  Credit to them for the terrific martinis. 

It's clear from the crowds at the bar when it opens at 4:30 that flood on in that they're keeping folks happy.

We came back to the room and began our grazing for the evening.  Veggies and dip, then a nice assortment of meats and cheeses with almonds and biscuits.  A good wine to go with it. 

Re-watching season one of The Crown on Netflix.  Eventually reading with music.  Little fuss, just us having that easy time together to end our last night in the UP for this trip.  A nice day for a drive, a nice evening, and the promise of being that much closer to being home.

the first year

Ten years. Today marks ten years from what Conrad and I consider our first date. Ten years.

That's, oh, 20 times longer than any previous relationship I'd previously had. Pats on the back all around.

In the run up to the Big Event (eat your heart out, Will and Kate), I've been casting backward from time to time. I thought it might be fun, then, to share photos from the first year Conrad and I were together.

Unsurprisingly, there are few photos of the two of us. There is this one, however, from about a month after we started dating. Our first appearance as a couple, I guess. It took some of our teammates another year to figure out we were together. We chuckle about that now.

That first year we traveled together: first San Diego (wow, another photo of us!), then trips to my homeland
and his (twice).
San Francisco followed on from that,
and then we capped the year in style, celebrating our anniversary (and his birthday the next day) with a trip to visit his cousins in Sweden.
I was a little afraid to tell him how much I wanted to go with him because I couldn't afford to buy a ticket, and I didn't think he'd use miles for me to go with him. I was delighted and grateful to be wrong.

It was from that trip that one of our household sayings came into our lives: As long as we have snacks and each other...

10 years, much snacking, each other. Enjoy a glimpse into our younger times together.

guilty pleasures

It invariably takes a trip out of town to bring out some of my guiltiest eating habits.

(We won't discuss the contents of the special drawer in the living room and all of their teeth-rotting capabilities.)

Conrad and I were up in the UP this past weekend, enjoying time with his family. And really, we didn't eat badly. Well, not too badly. I had a lovely piece of roast walleye on Saturday night, for example, and my poached eggs on Sunday morning were a perfect, simple breakfast.

On the other hand, I steered us to pasties for lunch on Saturday and willingly caved in to the joys of Old Dutch.

And then there were the onion rings at Culver's on the way home on Sunday. That salad? Not mine. Nope, not at all.

Bad Peter, bad. I foresee many days of diet soda and cigarettes ahead...

winery visits, MI and BC

July was interesting in that it allowed us opportunities to visit wineries in two very different parts of the world: the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Vancouver Island. Wine connoisseurs might scoff that either place produces anything they would consider good or proper wine. I might agree about some of what we tasted, in fact. Still, there's a certain fun and satisfaction in tasting local products made by people who have a passion for what they do and a belief in what they do. Will this wine age well and be worth hundreds of dollars a bottle one day? Nope. But Conrad and I can and will enjoy them casually some evening and think back to going out and tasting them.

Waaaaay back on the Fourth of July weekend we dropped in on the storefront for Leigh's Garden Winery in downtown Escanaba. We'd been there before, last year, and had a very nice time chatting with the family who own it, tasting. Back we went again, and hey! They remembered us. Very flattering.

We tasted almost all of their wines. My favourite? A rosé. Perfect for a summer long weekend. Conrad's sister and brother-in-law ended up liking a semi-sweet red we picked up and brought to the lake later that night. Conrad's mother favoured a white. One thing I will say, the new labels are very handsome, making fine use of vintage images of Escanaba. Given the work I do with such images, this use appeals to me greatly.

The next day the three of us were in a car exploring the Garden Peninsula. Pretty area, and the little village of Garden was a place to stop and browse for local arts and crafts before heading on to Threefold Winery.

Look, I hope it will not seem patronizing when I talk about this, but I rather love visiting places like this. No matter the wine, they always have an earnestness that appeals to me. Honestly? I didn't like all the wine, but I appreciated that they were making wine. And, in fact, we tasted some that we were glad to bring back, both grape wine and fruit wine.

All in all, the day was lovely. We bought amazing honey (as we later learned), some crafts, and some wine. We drove around and stopped and had views of both the awesome (in the truest sense) and beautiful views of the lake. We made it home happily.

Fast forward: end of July. July 25, right before my birthday, and there we were in BC with my parents and sister on a ferry bound from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, no plan in mind. Kernels of plans, perhaps. So what do we do? Head to a winery Conrad and I had enjoyed last year: Church and State. Lunch!

It's a handsome setting - a new-ish building with high ceilings and a view of the vineyards, wine for sale inside. We settled on the patio for lunch, a tasty affair. A bottle of a Merlot, good food, and the grapes growing below.

Sunshine. Nice. Even the parents liked it! So fine that, following a jaunt to the nearby Butchart Gardens, we came on back to actually do wine tasting.
Well, Marie and I did - Conrad was driving, and the parents had had enough for the day in terms of wine. My judgment? Good reds, not something I find a lot in BC.

We had a nice bit of time before we had to be at our ferry for our reserved sailing, so we dawdled and found ourselves at an unknown winery, Muse. Ah, I wish we'd visited before. Small, cute, charming, a (frankly) hot guy (with just enough chest hair showing above his open collar) pouring for us. Also, very attractive labels. I liked this place a lot. Marie shopped heavily. Me? I stuck to whites, though I thought the reds had some potential. We'll see.

The point of all this is only partially to suggest that wines can be found in the most offbeat and unexpected places. It's only partially to show off pretty pictures of my adventures. It's actually mostly to honour the people who are passionate about what they're trying to do and thank them. I have yet to visit a winery and think, "there's nothing here I wouldn't want to sit and enjoy at a later date". Oh, I know, I'm a snob, but I have deep appreciation for what people are honestly committed to. So yes, a wine tour of northern Michigan (pretty way out there) and Vancouver Island (a little less out there in my eyes, but then, I think others would choke in disbelief to have to consider Canadian wine). At its simplest, it provided some fine holiday memories, but I promise, we'll enjoy those bottles we bought at various points down the road.

Lake Michigan

We spent some time on the recent long weekend driving to nearby parts of the UP I'd not seen before. A holiday Sunday, and fine weather. Out on the Garden Peninsula near Conrad's hometown we stopped to have a simple picnic-ish lunch we'd packed, admire the little cove where a few families had gathered to lunch and even to swim, and then drove on to a beach near Manistique. That was as far as we got, but gosh, was it lovely. A long narrow sandy beach and a mighty wind that the seagulls coasted on and struggled against.











Sometimes, amid the flat urban landscape of Chicago, it's very easy to forget just how remarkable it is to have such a huge lake within eyesight.