For those of you who weren't actually there to help us celebrate our marriage, we took our wonderful vows on August 25th, 2007. That puts us now in the first steps of our third year of marriage. I can't believe its gone by so fast, and in someways its a little bittersweet. We aren't so young anymore and its hard to believe its been 2 years, where did the time go?
On our actual anniversary we were in Ludington, Michigan, so we went north to the sleeping bear dunes, then we spent the afternoon on a wine tour in the Sutton's Bay region of Michigan. For those of you who aren't familiar with the area, its absolutely beautiful. Drew had never even been to the shores of Lake Michigan on the Michigan side (he'd only trompsed around on the Wisconsin side, but that doesn't really count... I mean its actually Michigan's lake right? Why else would they name it Lake Michigan).
We were able to leave Collin with my family for the whole day so we packed in as much as we could, however mother nature took that as a competitive statement and challenged us the whole way.
We started our morning bright and early with a 2 hour drive north to the park. We packed our things, gathered our maps and tucked in a picnic lunch for the day. We were off to enjoy our anniversary! We hoped to get to the dunes early enough to beat all of the summer holiday travelers who aren't exactly fit enough to make the dune climb a pleasant experience. We envisioned one or more of these travelers loosing their footing and rolling down the dune taking out small children and people along the way like bowling pins. We had no intention of becoming bowling pins. To our pleasant surprise, when we arrived the dunes were nearly empty, so we quickly shed our shoes and started the climb.As a visitor, when you approach sleeping bear dune climb it doesn't seem like its too steep or huge, but in reality its a GIANT sand dune. If you look closely you see these little tiny ants...but you guessed it, they aren't ants. They are people. Crazy people like us, up at the crack of dawn, racing to the top of the dune to enjoy the view, unspoiled by hundreds of travelers.
As you climb your perspective improves and you find yourself saying, geez, this is a long way, wow I'm tired and do we have any more water? As we treded in the soft sand we were able to get some amazing morning views of the surroundings. It seemed so peaceful and austere. But still a bit exhausting. At the time we noticed the wind was picking up a little bit, but didn't think much of it. We should have listened to mother nature, but alas, we were lovestruck, spending our anniversary locked in adoration for each other. No amount of wind could have bothered us....(insert sarcasm here)... we chased a few tumbleweed (yes there are tumbleweeds at sleeping bear) and played in the sand.
After about an hour walk in toward Lake Michigan we made it to our lookout point, which was still about a mile to the shore. I promised Drew that the other lookouts at Sleeping bear national park were directly on the lakeside- he was looking forward to seeing the lake meet the great sleeping bear.
For those of you who don't know the legend of sleeping bear, you can find to whole story here, but in a nutshell, a momma bear and her cubs were out looking for food in Wisconsin. They were starving and noticed Michigan, because its so much nicer, had lots of good eats. So they decided to try to swim across the lake, but they became so tired that the two cubs didn't make it. So, the great dune on the shore is the momma bear, looking out over her two cubs, little and big Manitou Islands. Here she is, in all of her glory. Have a hard time 'seeing' a bear? Us too. Just use your imagination.
Back to the dune climb, here we are looking back at the inland lakes from about half way through our climb. You can't see the initial hill in this photo because we are so far in behind it.
After leaving the dune climb (amidst about 100 travelers...thank goodness we got there early) we went back to the sleeping bear scenic drive that includes the famous lookout point #9,(among other things, like a little covered bridge) where ridiculous people try to climb the dune, which is literally straight up and down and about 5 times as large as the one at the dune climb. We arrived at the lookout point and were greeted with some serious windiness. Now this would seem like no big deal, except for wind + sand = sandpaper shower. I wore a blanket just to avoid loosing my skin! 
It was awful! We could barely walk, let alone see, so we spent a total of maybe 10 minutes on the lookout. On this day because there was so much wind, and hopefully because its such a stupid idea, only one or two poor souls were trying to climb the dune here. You can see a very tiny little spot of a person along the shoreline in our photos.
After seeing the sleeping bear in all her magnificence- well, not really. The wind and erosion has made her look less and less like a sleeping bear and more and more like a little grassy plain. We ate a picnic lunch and started our way toward Sutton's Bay for wine touring.
The wine tour portion of our date was filled with lots of odds and ends. As a preface I'll mention that all of the wine tasting I've ever been on were in little wineries that were comfy little buildings, created to cater to wine-buyers. A wine bar, usually with a little shop, an outlook over the vineyards etc. Now, I've only been wine-tasting one other time, so maybe my expectations were limited but what we found along our trip was nothing short of strange.
Our first stop started out well. We started toward the west of Sutton's Bay and made our way toward Traverse City. It was a lonely Tuesday afternoon so the tasting rooms were wide open and we got lots of attention. The problem with attention is you feel obligated to buy something at every single winery..... We first stopped at Good Harbor Vineyards, which left a lot to your imagination. It was fairly boring. On a boring little road, in a boring little building. We were in and out in 15 minutes tops, but not without first buying two bottles of one of their white wines, Trillium, and its where the drinking began! Sadly, one of the pioneers of the Leelanau Peinnsula wine industry owned this vineyard and recently passed away.
Then we were on to a cluster of vineyards including 45 degrees, which sadly, was closed for construction and Circa, a new place that was super cute and had a great atmosphere and little porch. They gave away these little buttons, like flare. I chose "nutty" for Drew. He was sweet, and chose "exquisite" for me. We wore then for the rest of the day, you can see them in our last picture of the vineyards.
After Circa, we traveled on, all the while getting a bit more intoxicated. Drew was looking for reds, and striking out. At Circa the staff told us to try a vineyard called Raftshol to try the reds. Here's where the weirdness begins.Driving along we see lots of county signs for vineyards and finally see the one for Raftshol, except for it appears to drive into a driveway....to a garage. We are confused. But we pull in anyhow. We go to the door, which is indeed a garage door and we peer in. What do we see? A garage. boxes, books, piles of shit everywhere, and along side the stuff is a bar. A tasting bar to be exact. We felt like we were trespassing. In we went, and out comes (from the attached house) a little old man looking like the Gorton's Fisherman, with something similar to waders on (do wine-makers need waders?). We asked to try the red, he poured some and looked at us like, okay? What next. It was such an odd experience. The kicker was Drew says the wine was wonderful. We bought some. As we were waiting for him to write a bill of sale, on some recycled piece of a hotpocket box, I noticed the walls were studded with notes of the family sort. Buy paper towel, organize old taxes, etc. Who new some of the best wines come out of a little man's garage in the Leelanau Peninsula. Check out their website here, it doesn't show the 'tasting room' (surprise surprise) but you can read the endearing story of how he, and his brother found themselves in the wine-making business.
Moving on, as the wine starts to have an effect on me, the names of all of the wineries blurred together. We had a few more experiences in standard tasting rooms, adorable settings with yummy wine. We went to Black Star Farms, which has one of the cutest, mind you, spendy, B & B's around. We then went to Shady Lane Cellars, and I drank more and more. At every stop you get between 3 and 6 wine tastings, so by now, I was feeling good. Drew was holding himself accountable, as he was driving, while I was all about tasting as much as I could. Then we found ourselves at Willow, which sat high on a hill in Suttons Bay. Here I am at Willow, with perma grin admiring the little delicious grapes. At Willow, we ran into some other folks from Minnesota. Who knew!
Willow vineyard was adorable, with a iron gate with the word Willow spelled out in the iron. We loved it here (possibly because they had heavy pours). We then went on in a mumbo jumbo ruckus, landing at a few places including, L Mawby, which I remember because this was another diamond in the rough. This one wasn't in a garage though, it was in a barn. Saddle up kids. We walked in and found a sweet woman who shared all sorts of sparkling wine with us. I expected hay on the ground, but it turns out it was just concrete.For our wedding we recieved a bottle of Sex sparkling wine, we found that here. We had no idea it was local at the time, but appreciate it more now. We really liked their Fizz, which is a sweeter version and bought two bottles to celebrate with. We also learned that L Mawby has two lines, L. Mawby for their wines, and a reversa of the name, M. Lawerence for the sparkling wines. We sauntered out of the winery heavy two more bottles and went a few yards down the road to Ciccone vineyards. Yep. This is that Ciccone family. Turns out Madonna's family makes some good wines, and along the way doesn't forget to plug her products. You can buy an exclusive Madonna wine there. It actually looked pretty cheesy though, so we didn't try it. Drew tried the reds here and loved them, so we bought another bottle and made our way to our next stop, Chateau de Leelanau. By this point I was fairly incopacitated. We wandered in after I scarfed down a hershey's bar. I tried three more wines and liked one, but when we saw the price of just a half bottle (32.99) I scurried away. In the end, it was the only vineyard we didn't buy wine at. Just as we were leaving, mother nature was catchin up and it started to rain. We had about a 2 hour drive back to the cottage, so with my little buzz, and the blanket left over from the sandstorm I cuddled up for a little nap and Drew took us home with the sweet drone of rain putting me to sleep.
When we arrived we said hello the baby, stowed our 13 bottles of wine and quickly got ready for our anniversary dinner at the local Ludington Yacht club. We were exhausted after such a busy day, but thankful to be spending another anniversary together. We spent dinner talking about all sorts of things, how our life has changed, what we enjoyed about the day, but mostly I just found myself thinking how lucky I've been in life to find such an amazing husband.So here's to you Drew, better late than never.
To many many many more years of adventure, love and laughter.
All my love.
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