More Traverse City

 Here's a few more things we did on our vacation.

We love lighthouses.  Michigan has a lot of them to visit.  We've seen this one before, but stopped to see it again.  This is the Old Mission Lighthouse on Mission Point.

We went inside this one, and climbed to the lantern deck.

Look at these "stairs".  It was quite a feat to get to the top!

The Lighthouse is on the 45th parallel.  

Near the lighthouse is this old log cabin.  It was built in 1844-1846.

Look at the size of the logs!

The Mission Point drive is so pretty.  It's a peninsula so you can often see the lake on both sides.  It's also perfect grape climate, so there are fields of grapes all over, and also a lot of orchards.

We spent a little time in Traverse City at the Commons, which was formerly a huge mental hospital.  It was built with the premise that beauty is healing, so the buildings were gorgeous, there was fresh fruit and vegetables, flowers were abundant and music and art was celebrated.  It closed in the 70's and was falling apart, until a group took over and renovated it.  There are now condo's, shops, restaurants...  occupying these buildings and they are so enjoyable to walk through.

There was a huge farm that fed the residents in the hospital.  It's now turned into a botanical garden and this labyrinth is part of it.

We visited an ice cream shop called Moomers.  We had heard they had the best ice cream, made fresh from their own dairy farm.  They have been on Good Morning America and been named best ice cream in the United States by several magazines.
The ice cream was good, but the view blew me away.  They have a huge deck, where you can see the farm and the cows.  With the sun going down, it was very scenic!

Speaking of sunsets, we went out to the lake most every night and watched the sun go down.  It never gets old!