Dear Friends,

We left in both vehicles at 10:30 am for Spring Harbor, just North of Petoskey. After the 1.5 hour trip to one end of the Little Traverse Wheelway, we dropped off Diamond’s truck and drove to the other end of the trail, which was near Charlevoix. The views along the trail were spectacular. The bay was gorgeous with a clear blue sky and whitecaps on the water part of the way. The trail ran along next to the water much of the time. On the other hand, the trail itself was not all that great. It was bumpy much of the time, and ran along narrow city sidewalks part of the way. A review on the Internet had warned of steep hills, and there were two of them that had me grinding away in low gear pulling Queen Mary up the hill at 4 or 5 mph, but I made it without having to walk up the hills. Of course, there were also some good downhill stretches. All in all we enjoyed the trail. It turned out to be only 21.2 miles according to my odometer.

Since we did not find a good place to eat along the trail, we decided to look up an Olive Garden on my GPS when we returned to the starting point to pick up my van. The GPS said that the nearest one was 46 miles by air from where we were, and it is always farther by car. So we decided to look for an Italian restaurant as we headed back to Grayling. At the beginning my GPS told me to go back toward Petoskey, but I wanted to see Charlevoix, so just went the other way. Of course there was a lot of “Recalculating”, but we had not gone far when we spotted an Italian restaurant. It turned out to be a good place to eat, at least I liked it. Only problem was I left stuffed and still had to being some home. Mary and I could have ordered one plate and had plenty to eat. Jane ordered a “Bambino” dish and it was much more than she could eat.

After we ate I continued to ignore a couple more “Recalculating” remarks from the GPS and then, when it was clear that it was not going to have us go back to Petoskey, I started to follow its instructions. I was a bit puzzled when it told me to turn left and “Ferry Road.” Just a short way down Ferry Road was a ferry. It cost us $3.25 to cross to the other side, but added to the fun of the day. When we ended up on the ferry I realized that we were on a peninsula and that the ferry was the quickest way off.

When we got back there was still time for a couple of games of Rook. We won one and they won one. A fitting was to end our adventures with the Diamonds. Tomorrow we go North and they go South.

That’s all for today.

Jared