After a fairly late night, most of the group got a late start this morning, but arose to a beautiful day.
After eating breakfast, we spend a couple hours playing on the beach and in the water of Round Lake. Sandcastles were built, children were buried, and minnows were not caught.
Emmy demonstrated what a diaper filled with sand and lake water looks like:
After that, we took a quick dip in the development’s indoor pool and hot tub.
We visited the Toski Sands market around the corner and stocked up on lunch and adult beverage supplies. While eating lunch, we decided that it was time to go hunting for Petoskey stones, which we knew aren’t really located in Petoskey anymore. We had found many in Good Harbor Bay and in Glen Haven while at Sleeping Bear two years ago, and had read that Charlevoix still has many Petoskey stones.
On to Charlevoix
Charlevoix was a town that we visited many times in my youth on our annual summer stays at Walloon Lake, and my memories of it as a cute summer town with lots of boats and a drawbridge were fairly accurate. We drove west from Petoskey and tried several roadside parks, but found none worthy of hunting for stones. I’d read that Big Rock Point, former site of a nuclear plant, was a good place for Petoskey Stones, but we couldn’t figure out how to easily access the area, so we headed into downtown Charlevoix then spent some time walking around town.
To our joy, we discovered that Charlevoix has a Cherry Republic store, though it’d be much better if it had the restaurant like the one in Glen Arbor! Many things were sampled in the store, and the girls actually all had their heads through the holes for a single picture:
Devin and Aly paused to enjoy a few final sour cherries:
Since both of our kids were having meltdowns, the Vogels got back to the cars first and settled down on some church steps for a snack break.
Charlevoix Beach
We hopped into the cars for the one-minute ride down to the beach, where we found two parking spots right along the beach and headed down into the breezy afternoon to search for Petoskey stones.
The waves were confused by the wind and the breakwater, making for moderately dangerous swimming conditions. Luckily, the water was freezing, and Aly was the only one foolish enough to venture past calf-level.
We did find many Petoskey stones, along with plenty of other cool looking rocks, which pleased everyone. We packed up and drove back to the condo for dinner, cocktails, and general fun with the children, before retiring to prepare for the next day.
