Saturday, July 14, 2012

A short but real vacation

Our married son, daughter-in-law and Colton invited us to join them in Traverse City for the National Cherry Festival. The festival runs for a week but we were only able to go for two days, staying there Wednesday and Thursday night. The hotels were booked Friday and Saturday.

Hubby and I had a great time, but it had more to do with the antics of a two year old than the festival. Sorry festival organizers, but nothing can beat a grandchild for entertainment, at least not to first time grandparents.


Grandma, are you going to photograph me for 48 solid hours?
Silly boy....I have to sleep sometime!
The joys of modern family vehicles over what transportation 30 years ago...DVD entertainment! Our destination was roughly 4 hours from home. We watched The Goofy Movie (seen in this photo),
Cars, Toy Story, (all animated movies) as well as Looney Tunes and Kipper videos. Multiple times. Often while hearing other videos playing on Mommy or Daddy's cell phone held in his 2 year old hands with a death grip. You might notice that my son is wearing ear buds while driving. He is listening to sports while all this other stuff is going on.

The view from our room. Not bad, eh?


Parasailing, anyone? Not this chicken. Not only am I not a spring chicken, I was a yellow bellied, scaredy-cat chicken when I was a young chick.


It certainly was pretty weather for it though.

On the way to the festival, we visited Lego Land. There were 5 or 6 Lego sculptures that were amazing to me. I wish they had placards stating how many pieces were used and how long it took to create the various designs.


All fairs look alike, don't they?
Playing the duck game, about the only game slanted in favor of the participants.

The following day we visited the The Village at the Grand Traverse Commons, a collections of shops and eateries housed in what was once Traverse City State Hospital, also known as Northern Michigan Asylum. What a nice way to preserve interesting architecture and make a happy place out of one that for a century had to be a very dark place. I am not inferring poor treatment, just unhappiness that anyone should suffer from mental illnesses that required hospitalization.


I didn't ask busy shopkeepers if I could photograph their stores so this is the only photo I took in one of the halls. Those aren't stained glass windows for sale, they are glass mosaics. I don't know what holds them together, but they were beautiful.


Colton is such a little fish! He is drawn to water anywhere and everywhere, be it a pool, a lake, a sprinkler or a puddle. 

We only bought a few items on this trip. A jar of cherry-almond butter that I will savor on toast and pretend it is calorie free and easy to purchase without ordering it online for $17 with shipping and tax; a pound of chocolate covered dried cherries (I think it is crack in disguise) that would cost about $27 to replace by mail; this rubber cord necklace and silver slide that holds any of the four "lucky stones" that I bought
and this cobalt vase. Because I needed it. Really, I did.
The vase is 4.5 inches tall. The lucky stones are Black Labradorite, Purple Crazy Lace, Howlite (the white stone) and  Rose Jasper.

According to legend, stones with holes in them are lucky and have been collected as talismans since the Neolithic age. Some believed they could cure illnesses or ward off misfortune and nightmares. Fisherman kept them to increase their catch and farmers nailed them to their barns to protect their livestock. In Victorian days, it was considered especially lucky to spit on the stone and toss it over your left shoulder while chanting "Lucky stone, Lucky stone, bring me some luck, today or tomorrow at twelve o'clock."


I didn't have any of these stones with me when I played penny slots at Turtle Creek casino, but I did win $364.10 

3 comments:

Southhamsdarling said...

Hi Knitty. Little Colton is just so cute, and it must have been wonderful for you spending that time with him. That is indeed wonderful views of the beach that you had there. I love that cobalt blue vase. It was obviously calling out to you, saying "buy me, buy me!" As you say, the in-car entertainment that they have these days is amazing, isn't it. We just used to say, let's see how many red/blue/yellow cars we can count!!!Still, it all helps to make life that little bit easier when you are travelling with little ones.Lovely post today.

Sewconsult said...

Loved seeing how much Colton is growing. How do kids travel and not play the alphabet game? How do they know where they are going without their own road maps. Once the girls were in elementary school, we always had 2 maps for each state or city. (Hubby is a map nut) It taught them map reading skills and they had no reason to keep asking "when will we be there?".
I miss the summer trips to Cadillac. It was usually during the cherry season. We would load up with cherries and one place (I don't remember the name) had beautiful baskets to sell.

michelle said...

Sounds like you had a great time.