Last weekend we went up to Petoskey. We had not been there before, even though I would have liked to make it up for the opening of the photography exhibition at the Crooked Tree Arts Center. Now the show was over, and the print needed to come home, and it seemed a good opportunity to get out of town. As for our trip to Leelanau and Northport last year, we broke up the journey by stopping in Midland and catching up with Jill’s gardening author Sheri. We’d seen more and more snow amongst the trees as we drove up from Midland, but it was still a surprise as we drove into Petoskey to see that Little Traverse Bay was still frozen over!

After taking care of business at the Art Center (what a fabulous place) we went for a hike out at the North Central Michigan College. On the drive up, one topic of conversation had been the impact of deer on the landscape, on trees. Admittedly this was in the context of Scotland, but here was a classic illustration of their browsing, although again, this was on trees that had already managed to survive to some maturity before being grazed clean, but only up to a height. The trails were compacted snow, well ice really, which was melting, making for very slippy walking, especially for Jill, so we didn’t attempt to go all the way round. Still good to get out and be in the woods.

After that, we had to go down to the waterfront to see if the that really was ice over the bay. I didn’t go out on it, but it certainly looked it. There’s a nice park along the waterfront, but the main attraction was the marina and the lighthouse at the end. We stayed overnight in-between Petoskey and Harbor Springs, and next morning we went into Harbor Springs for coffee, and there you could see how the ice was starting to break up. After a quick detour to see where the Tunnel of Trees started, we settled into (what we consider) the long drive home.