Traverse City Winery Trip March 27-29, 2009

Jason & I visited Traverse City for a long weekend (and late 2nd anniversary celebration). For those that are not familiar, Traverse City is located on the northwestern side of Michigan and is well-known for being the cherry capital of the world. Traverse City also has two main peninsulas that have tons of wineries that primarily produce sweet wines, such as Rieslings.

A gorgeous view from the Old Mission Peninsula in Traverse City, Michigan

We left our house on Friday morning and made the 4 hour drive to the other side of the state. Upon arriving we checked into the Cherry Tree Inn & Suites (see, I told you it was all about the cherries!). Our room was very nice and had a fire place, which is great considering it was still quite chilly in Traverse City. Friday evening we had a nice dinner at Scott's Harbor Grill and spent the rest of the night relaxing in our room.

On Saturday, we headed out to visit the wineries on the Old Mission Peninsula. We started at the Chateau Chantal, which was on a high hill and had a great view of both sides of the peninsula. We really liked their Pino Grigio and also enjoyed the Cherry Cerise, which is a sweet, dessert wine.

The second stop was Chateau Grand Traverse - we were already familiar with Grand Traverse wines because they are sold in our local grocery stores. Our favorites were their Sweet Harvest Riesling and Cherry Sangria. They also had Edelzwicker, which was a new wine for both of us. The Edelzwicker was a blend of Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc & Muscat and was also referred to as the "Noble Blend."




Third stop was the Peninsula Cellars - the tasting room was located in an old one room schoolhouse and many of the wines had names that were school related. For example, they had wines that were called "Old School House White" and "Old School House Red." My favorite was their 2006 Chardonnay and Jason enjoyed the Apple Wine.



The fourth and final stop on our winery tour was at the Black Star Farms Winery. This was our favorite winery of the four that we visited - it was a new and contemporary location, plus the owner was extremely friendly, knowledgeable and personable. He spent a lot of time telling us about the wine process, specifically the procedure for making Ice Wines. Ice Wines are very sweet and are made from grapes that were allowed to ripen and freeze at 18 degrees on the vine. He also told us that the president recently enjoyed some of the Black Farms Ice Wine at a dinner that was hosted at the white house (it's good to know that the president is still enjoying the finer things in life during this economic recession, huh?) :-) We left with a few bottles of the infamous Ice Wine, along with some Late Harvest Riesling.


After our winery visits, we did some shopping in downtown Traverse City. The downtown area was quite nice and had hundreds of shops. We spent some time at the "Cherry Stop," a gift shop and wine bar that had everything cherry. We also browsed around the "Leaping Lizard" and "What to Wear" shops. The bartender at the Cherry Stop recommended that we have dinner at a nearby restaurant called the "Firefly." We had some local wine, several tapas plates and chocolate fondue for dessert. After a long day of touring the town, we headed back to our room for some much needed rest.


This morning we awoke to find out it had snowed about 6 inches! We grabbed a quick breakfast at Mable's (another recommendation of the Cherry Stop bartender) and hit the road. It was a great trip - how could it not be when you return home with a trunk full of wine??? :-) Here are a few more pictures from our trip.....

We bought 28 bottles of wine - I think it's safe to say our "cellar" is stocked!

We also purchased two wine glasses at each winery that we visited ... hey, gotta have something to drink the wine from, right? :-)

St Patty's Day Pub Crawl 2009

Jason & I attended the annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Crawl on Saturday, March 14th. The Pub Crawl consists of 12 or so bars in the Port Huron area .... bar goers travel from pub to pub on buses and the goal to to visit as many as you can. Of course, everyone wears green from head to toe - some people really go all out and wear leprechaun hats, glittery vests with shamrocks and green feather boas! Here are Jason & me in our green attire:

Me - decked out in green & in the St. Patty's spirit!

Check out my new GREEN purse!

Jason, not quite as excited about the green attire as I was :-)

Thankfully, we had good weather - it was sunny and in the 50s, which is a bit unusual for Michigan. (if you refer back to last year's Pub Crawl pictures, we still had mounds of snow on the ground!) We had a great time with friends - it was a fun, but LONG day! Here are a few more pictures from the Pub Crawl:

Andrea & Niki on the bus - headin' to the next stop on our tour!

Posing with our "pink poodle" shots

This girl was ready to party with her "drinking belt" - it held 2 shots & two beers!

Our crew at Rum Runners bar

The ladies & our GREEN pucker shots at Outpost Bar

Check out Jason's "strategically-placed" buttons .... can you tell this was the end of the night? :-)

Andrea, Carrie & me - we had a blast!

Warning - not my usual happy post, need your prayers

The past several days have been a bit of a downer - I usually try to keep blob posts upbeat and happy, but wanted to share some news with everyone ...

Last week I received word that the 5 yr old son of Stacy Betts (my former boss at Cisco) had a heart attack! Yes, 5 year old Landon had a heart attack and no one is exactly sure why .... he has been in Wake Med since the incident. Some folks created a Facebook page entitled "Praying for Landon Betts" and literally thousands of people joined in a matter of hours; the creators of the site have been keeping us up to date each day with Landon's progress. If you would like to see/join the site, please visit:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1445917352#/group.php?gid=84819191256&ref=mf

It looks like the prayers for Landon are working - over the past several days he has awoken, been responsive & had his chest tube removed. His lungs and body are still very weak, but he is quite the little fighter. Please keep Landon and the Betts family in your prayers - for those of you that are familiar with my Cisco days, Stacy Betts is by far one of the nicest people and best managers I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. I wish nothing but the best for him and his little boy!

As many of you know, I have been teaching Developmental Math at the local Baker College campus since last fall. I found out today that one of my co-workers, Zach Diatchun, passed away unexpectedly. We do not yet know the cause and I was shocked and saddened by this news. Zach has been extremely helpful to me since I started at Baker - he was always willing to help me with any questions and was so full of spunk and life. He was quite a jokester - just this past Saturday Zach walked into my classroom with a huge drill in his hand (apparently a maintenance worker left it behind in Zach's classroom by mistake). He had a big grin on his face and said to my students "If anyone would rather do manual labor today than math, I have some work for you!" He then fired up the drill, making a loud noise and the class all giggled. He was a great teacher, but loved to make people smile and never seemed to take himself too seriously.

Zach taught full time at the St. Clair County Tech Center, and Jason often saw him there when he did Marine set-ups at the school. He had worked at the Tech Center for over 20 years, and had been teaching part-time at Baker for the past 5 years. He will be deeply missed by all.

I hope my next post will be filled with happy news, but for now, I ask for your prayers. Please pray that Landon fully recovers from his cardiac arrest and for the Betts family to have strength and patience during this difficult time. Also, pray that the Diatchun family and all of those touched by Zach's wit and charm will be able to come to terms with his untimely passing.