Wine and Showshoe

It was less than a year ago that Jason and I went up to Traverse City, Michigan with Susie and Tony for the Taste the Passion wine tasting event put on by the Leelanau Peninsula Vitner's Association. And here we are again ... but this time, we brought a whole crew of friends. Ten people in all, the Sands Motel was certainly happy to see us during this super slow tourist time. Christina and Rodney gave us a ride up Friday night. We arrived late to find our room keys in envelopes taped to the locked motel lobby door. This sort of thing would never be safe where we come from, but in the far North, why not?

The next morning we headed out to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore where Jason and I collected a new stamp in our national parks passport book. Then we snowshoed the Pierce Scenic drive which they close off for the winter season for snowshoers and cross country-skiiers. We didn't make it far since we dallied in the winter wonderland to make up mini snowmen and to have fierce snowball free-for-alls. Only a few injuries were reported. The boys enjoyed striking out off the trail like polar explorers while the gals wondered if we might ever see them again.

Then we headed over to our first winery stop: Cherry Republic, where we had some delicious chicken mole tacos and cherry wine for our first wine-and-food pairing. Kelly snagged the recipe but will be unable to replicate it without a food processor. We also tasted some cherry champagne and a cherry port that tasted like cough syrup. Next door this winery/cherry emporium sold everything you can imagine with cherries in it, including cherry salsa, cherry pretzels, gummy cherries, on and on. We could have easily stuff ourselves there with sugar, but instead we headed over to nearby Boone Docks for lunch.

That afternoon we hit a few more wineries, went out for dinner with Susie's parents, then went to Susie's parents' home for some hot cocoa, cookies, and hot tubbin'. The next morning we had to forgo snowshoeing because we'd been hit by a blizzard! It was painfully cold out and the wind blasted us with icy flakes. So we opted for a leisurely breakfast that ended up with the worst luck in service ever. Kelly ordered a tea to try called "Heartwarming Cinnamon" which she detested. Jason ordered an omelette without onions that arrived choked with them. Susie had a misunderstanding about the kind of bread she wanted for her french toast. Then the bill arrived and we'd been charged for an extra omelette. We headed over to a book store in town and Jason found a book of haiku by Japanese writer Basho, whom he'd read about in a National Geographic article left in our room at the Sands which we later stole. Because of the foul weather, we spent the entire day wine tasting rather than snowshoeing although the roads between wineries were harrowing. A couple times our car coming down the hill was unable to stop, but luckily we avoided incident.

That night we had dinner at the North Peak brewery, and afterward discovered this great Irish pub downstairs where live Celtic music was playing. We stayed for a few songs, and even got to sing along.

The next morning we arose early to hit the road. On our way out of town we stopped at the Traverse Pie Company where Kelly bought Jason a piece of cherry crumble pie that she owed him from last year. Then we hit to road, stopping at the Bob Evans for lunch near St. Joseph on the way home. The roads were still nasty, full of scary potholes and unplowed sections of the highway.