Traverse City Adventure: Northern Michigan state of mind

DAY 34 • 14 SEPTEMBER 2017 • FRANKFORT

We rose at first light, loaded the bags for our last day of riding on this adventure, stopped at the Crescent Bakery.

A month of riding several hours a day.  Metabolism ramped up in the red zone.  Coffee, fruit, a pancake or two, a couple eggs and sausage and usually a homemade cinnamon bun for an appetizer. Melted butter makes it special.  That usually carries us to lunchtime when a cheeseburger beckons.  

They make a good one at Friendly Joe’s in Empire, Michigan - a crossroads town of a few hundred.  My personal favorite: Swiss cheese and fried onions, plus a sweet dose of ketchup.  Marky, our waitress, longboards with a push pole along the Sleeping Bear Dunes Heritage Trail.  I wasn’t up for alcohol at lunch but she bagged up a bottle of Squishy hard cherry cider for an end of the day celebration.

But I had a hankering for a piece of Michigan cherry pie.  This is big time cherry country.  

“Nope,” she said, “but you can get a slice at Cherry Republic in Glen Arbor.”

I had seven miles or so to ponder a piece of cherry pie and cherry vanilla ice cream.  Why hold back?

Cherry Republic is all about nothing but cherries.  Owner Sutherland started out making cherry cookies for college money a quarter century back.  Now he’s parlayed the company into something much bigger, but only for northwestern Michigan.  He loves northwestern Michigan with its blue lakes, big dunes, pretty rivers, orchards and the farmers he likes to help.  He wants his stores and restaurants only in that part of Michigan because he wants them to be part of the area’s magnetism - to boost the considerable tourism economy.

“Life, liberty, beaches and pie.”  Ten kinds of ice cream, all with cherries.  Five kinds of wine: all with cherry juice even if it’s the 10 percent he puts into Cherry Republic’s Michigan Pinot Noir.  Haven’t tried it yet but the Squishy cider, bottled by another Michigan outfit, brought on sour cherry flavor and softened the edges with its 7.5 percent alcohol.

Cherry salsa, chocolate-covered cherries, cherry-coated pretzels, dried cherries, cherrywood planks for flavorful cooking of the whitefish, lake trout and several varieties of salmon that cruise the lakes and rivers here. Cherry pop for the kids.  Cherry-chocolate flavored coffee. Cherry Republic has it all and I love Sutherland’s inclusive philosophy. Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, except for cherries.

Inclusivity and enlightenment go hand in hand.

Thirty-nine miles today on the legendary M22 that winds its way along the Lake Michigan shoreline, up and over old-growth dunes, through peach and apple orchards, and into little towns steeped in logging, fishing, orchard and tourism history.

The lakeside town of Frankfort we left this morning with that satisfying bellyful of breakfast dates back to the late 1800s when it was a haven for Chicago folks looking for a summer break from the city.  At one point, ferries carried railroad cars across Lake Michigan from the neighboring town of Elberta to five different Wisconsin cities. A man in the town told us the rail ferry remained viable until 1985.

Today’s total brings this trip’s Grand Total to 1,130 miles.

Life’s an activity.  Get after it!