A Visit Home

Next week I will be off to visit home—the Traverse City, Michigan area. I don’t get back very often. That is partly because I rarely take time off and partly because it’s a long way to drive from Dallas. It takes either three days or two very long days to drive. You can fly into Traverse City, but the airport is small and the flights are expensive.

Here’s an aerial picture of Traverse City:


The city nestles at the bottom of a long bay off of Lake Michigan. The Traverse Bay is divided into two parts (creatively called East Bay and West Bay) that are separated by a narrow band of land known as Old Mission. The views from the surrounding hills are tough to beat.

Old Mission has become a favorite location to establish vineyards over the past few decades. I don’t know if it is especially good for growing grapes, but the narrow band of land between the waters is certainly a great location to establish picturesque wineries.


This will be a pretty low key vacation. My wife and I are just going to drive there and spend time with my father and his wife and my brother and sister-in-law. We will do some sightseeing, maybe a little walking, at the most maybe we’ll find time to paddle a canoe.

I hope to decompress from an extremely busy winter and spring. There are some books that I’ve been wanting to read and I have some material for blogs that I just haven’t had time to write. I hope I’ll have time next week to do those simple things.