A storm huffed and puffed last night but there was no blowing down this house, which has stood its ground for decades. For once I took comfort in how old this cottage is. I figured it had withstood many a storm blowing over the late. Fortunately there was not e wind than rain so the cottage didn’t get more musty and the sun was out by midday. We went to lovely Empire Beach about 20 miles north in the pretty village of Empire where I hoped to stay this year. A maybe next year.
Tonight my best friend from high school Polly and her husband Jamie who live in empire right now while their house in Glen Arbor is getting a makeover came over for a hike in the woods at Railroad Point Nature Center and then dinner of grilled whitefish (an Emma specialty) and white bean & avocado salad (a Noah speciality) and cherry pie. lovely get together up north!
JUST FYI: (This post is from a week ago…Wordpress is acting up.)
I may be allergic to something in this ancient musty cottage (my throat got clogged last night) but beyond that, we are sitting pretty, on the shores of Crystal Lake, a short walk to the town beach and small downtown which does, in fact, have a surprisingly good Jewish deli.
Our temporary home base.
We do most things outside in our enormous fenced-in yard (good for Millie the dog) and the wraparound screened in-porch with an odd assortment of ancient chairs and 3 folding beds (I may try one tonight instead of sleeping in the low ceilinged upstairs bedroom, reached by a small set of steep narrow steps that Millie and I have trouble navigating.)
Birch trees and lake along Betsie Valley Trail
Noah, Dirck and I rode on the wonderfully scenic and flat, crushed gravel Betsie Valley Trail, all along the southern shore of Crystal Lake past cottages, most modest and old, some new and fancy, but this town feels refreshingly less posh than Harbor Springs or even Glen Arbor. The weather is perfect, sunny, 80s, with a breeze. We rode almost to Frankfort on the trail from Beulah and also rode a few miles the opposite direction into the woods on a rougher gravel trail.
Lunch was excellent deli fare at L’chaim Deli in small, unassuming downtown Beulah. Pastrami on rye, Rueben sandwich, a bagel sandwich with artichokes and peppered feta (the Jerusalem). There’s a few interesting little shops including an old head shop feeling place with lots of stones and jewelry with local stones, not only petosky stones but a green stone found in nearby Frankfort and a blue stone found in nearby Leland. I also learned about a quintessential Detroit stone, “Fordite” (the Detroit agate) so-called because it was made from old congealed paint from auto factories.
I swam In Crystal Lake, walking a half block to the public beach. Warm, shallow, sandy bottom and some risk of swimmers itch, same as 10 years ago, so I showered right after getting out and walking back here. Then off to Frankfort for a swim in Lake Michigan, also sandy, shallow for awhile, calm. We went over to the Point Betsie Lighthouse, a pretty old white brick tower attached to redbrick living quarters. I’m told the Betsie stems from a mispronunciation of a French word.
I bought cherry everything at the old-fashioned Cherry Hut a few minutes away. The waitresses wear white shirts with cherry red shirts that flare out at the waist. Excellent cherry pie, cherry preserves, dried cherries, cherry danish and at a produce shop next door I got real in-season cherries, a dark wine red. tonight we grilled fresh white fish from the famous Port City Smokehouse in the nearby bigger town of Frankfort. Michigan sweet corn is pretty good too!
We found a great place to stop for lunch en route to Crystal Lake in northern Michigan, a sophisticated little cafe called the Farmhouse in Douglas outside of saugatuck. Easy in, easy out, with a nice little area in the woods behind the bakery with picnic tables, perfect for dining with a dog on a leash. And very good sandwiches.
Frisbee by Crystal Lake
We had the mufaletta and turkey club and got a takeaway pasta casserole for dinner tonight that was delicious with corn, arugula, sausage, bacon, curly pasta and red sauces.
Nice evening settling into our funky old cottage in Beulah with an enormous screened-in wrap around porch, a huge yard for frisbee playing and picnic tables directly overlooking Crystal Lake. We sat outside in plastic Adirondack chairs and watched a spectacular sunset at 9 pm, the sky bright red and orange sinking into the water on the horizon.
Great to see a line out the door onto Cottage Grove at Black Cat, the ice cream shop relocated from a window at a downtown bar to a funky old building in the Drake neighborhood. The ice cream is pricey ($5 for a dish) and not quite as good as our local favorites (Bauders on Ingersoll Ave in DSM and Outside Scoop in Ankeny and Indianola) but can’t beat the location (a healthy walk for us from our house) and great for th neighborhood. I enjoyed trying out the comfy new swing in a pocket park down the street.
We have not flown since March of 2020 and I have been reluctant to fly anytime soon, even post-vaccine, unless absolutely necessary. Now I see this was wise, after receiving schedule changes from Delta today for two necessary trips in October that we are looking forward to — a wedding in Ithaca and a bar mitzvah in New York City. Both schedule changes were not great. I tried calling Delta for help with rescheduling and got a recording that my wait time was…8 hours and 52 minutes.
I thought the “basic fare” meant I could make changes to my ticket with out a fee but apparently not — even though the airline made the change, not us. (This still doesn’t seem right and I’ve looked back at the language from Delta when I bought the ticket and it’s NOT right. We bought our basic economy tix on March 23 — so they should be refundable and changeable, with no fee:
FROM DELTA: Updated as of March 3, 2021
Yes, you can. We understand that your plans may change, to continue simplifying travel, we have eliminated change and cancel fees for tickets originating in North America (excluding Basic Economy tickets purchased after March 30, 2021, which are non-refundable and non-changeable).
By eliminating change fees, you have the flexibility to change the date, time or location of your trip without a fee. Sometimes, your new flight may cost more than your original flight. In this case you would need to pay the difference in price.
MEANWHILE….The website said my only option was to cancel and get a full refund. I decided to keep the Ithaca flight – even though we now have a 3-hour layover in Detroit (maybe I can meet up with my dad at the airport?) – because there were no better options. Meanwhile the flight cost us $358 when booked a few months ago. If bought today, it would cost $908. So I guess we were wise to book ahead. I also had to rebook my car rental to adjust the pickup and drop off times – maybe I was lucky the price for the rental only went up $12?
With the NYC flight, Delta appears to have gotten rid of one of its two direct flights (the early afternoon one) from Des Moines to LaGuardia. Instead of rescheduling me on the other direct flight (at 6 a.m.) Delta rescheduled me for a flight at 10 a.m.-ish with, again, a long layover in Detroit. This time I opted to cancel my rescheduled flights and rebook (for the same price) with the 6 a.m. direct flight, which is not my favorite hour to travel but I’m thinking direct flight is better than ever right now, given the high likelihood of cancelations. Friends who recently flew to see their son in Alaska from Des Moines – had problems with every leg of their trip (three flights each way).
Meanwhile I’m braced for future scheduling changes….
Why have I never explored this northeast Des Moines neighborhood at the intersection of Euclid and 6th Avenues in the 30 years I’ve lived here? I’ve driven past it and admired the oddly elegant façade of French Way Cleaners and Dryers (cq) — a 1916 light-brown brick two-story building with concrete trumpeters perched high atop brick columns ushering people into what was originally a dry cleaners (now-closed; what’s in there now? photos here; more details below) — and the Jetsons-style retro sign arching over the main drag (not sure if/where Oak Park and Highland Park diverge).
swan chair and Saarinen table at Tesoro
Yesterday, I was finally lured there after hearing about Des Moines Mercantile, a lovely, carefully-curated gift shop with an emphasis on Iowa made products – creamy beeswax candles shaped like morel mushrooms, woolen blankets from the Amana Colonies, all manner of Des Moines-made cards, hand towels, t-shirts, flags. There are also items from beyond item including a small children’s book selection that had the exact book that has been on my list for my grandson (so why not buy it here?!).
I dropped in at Hiland Bakery, which has been around since the 1940s, famed for its doughnuts. My first visit. It is a nice mix of old school bakery, with donuts, some with pastel-colored frosting, displayed in a glass case, and contemporary coffee shop, which I gather is newer, with local art hanging on exposed brick walls. There’s a hipster-looking coffee cafe next door too.
Stepping into the oddly named Tesoro Casegoods and Oddities was like walking into my parents living room in Michigan during the 1960s and 1970s. (Casegoods, I learned, refers to furniture made of hard materials, such as wood, metal, glass or plastic including chests, dressers, bookshelves, and cabinets.) The place is full of mid-century modern furniture – very expensive, sadly – by the likes of Knoll and Saarinen. Very fun to tour. Jenny’s Attic, a flea shop nearby, was more in my price range. I bought two vintage table cloths for a total of $8. Quite the contrast to the roomy display at Testones, Jenny’s Attic is a rabbit warren of cluttered shelves and smells like the smoke from the proprietor’s pipe, which he was puffing on as he rang up – or more accurately, typed in – my big purchase.
Here’s what The Society of Architectural Historians says about the French Way building: This exotic Prairie-school building has all the appearance of a bank building rather than a dry-cleaning establishment. Two brick piers break up the front, and they rise to form bases for a pair of stone figures of enthroned horn players. Balanced above and to the side of each player are large globe lights. To the sides and between the players are stone light standards in forms that almost look like fishes. The sculptural figures and light standards were produced by the local stone firm of Rowot.
Biking through downtown Des Moines today, we encountered many young people riding or carrying skateboards and speaking all kinds of language. “Where are you from?” I asked one smiling handsome young guy. “Argentina!” he said with a big smile, reminding me of the fun-loving Argentinians I worked with on a kibbutz 40-some years ago.
Des Moines’s new world-class Lauridson Skatepark (reportedly the nation’s largest), overlooking the river downtown, is hosting a world-class skateboard competition, the Dew Tour, (as in Mountain Dew), that starts this Thursday May 20 and runs through May 23. Word has it the tour is the only U.S.-based Olympic skateboard qualifying event in 2021. (Skateboarding will debut as an Olympic event this summer in Tokyo, if the games happen.)
Tickets sold out in a flash but you can see the pros – and wannabes and amateurs – doing crazy stunts now, from a comfortable perch atop 2nd Street near I-235. (We rode our bikes there.) I was the one exclaiming “Oh my God!” as young men zipped up and down a pro-level course designed for world-class and amateur events. We overlooked what looked like a deep unfilled swimming pool, watching young fearless men flipping in mid-air, zipping down and back up, riding the rim of the pool and any other rim of any other structure nearby. When they got separated from their board, they’d often catch it and land like acrobats on the side wall of the pool and run down and back up. They seemed to be having the time of their lives – and I’m glad they were wearing helmets.
The skateboarders have discovered Zombie Burger in the East Village. Quite the scene, with an unlikely mix of long-haired often foul-mouthed but otherwise pleasant young skateboarders (“I met this f-king Finnish dude, f-king rad,” the skinny scraggly-haired skateboarder said to his pal at the table next to us), bikers in black leather jackets (the “Nomads” appear to be amassing), Little League families and us. Love it!
I never thought I would be riding my bike along Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit, stopping at a trendy new hotel (Shinola) and eating a tuna melt outside from a trendy bakery (Avalon) overlooking the old Hudson’s department store (now a construction site) but it all happened today. This is not the Detroit of my childhood and amen to that. We brought our bikes down to the famous Eastern Market, east of downtown, on a quiet Tuesday and glided onto the Dequindre Cut greenway, an urban trail that was once a sunken railroad line. It’s a straight shot two miles to the Detroit River, past urban decay turned urban cool, with murals painted onto worn overpasses and hulking remnants of industrial buildings now looking sculptural Instead of menacing. It reminded me of a more urban version of the Greenway in Minneapolis.
Dequindre Cut
We ended up biking west along the scenic riverwalk past RenCen to joe Louis Arena, then back past Hart Plaza to RenCen where we got off the trail and hit the downtown streets. Although there were maps suggesting a trail, we couldn’t find any bike lanes but the traffic was manageable and we rode from Beaubien over to Woodward, passing though greektown (one of the few places we used to go downtown in the 1970s) to near commerica park where the Tigers play and then to Woodward. As always, you see so much more when biking. For the first time I saw how places connect to each other and where they are in relation to each other.
We ate a sandwich outside overlooking Woodward and marveling at how it has changed. It’s not bustling with people, which may be due to the pandemic, and it being a Tuesday. But it wasn’t desolate either and there were enough people around that we felt comfortable. A light rail train glided soundlessly past us.
Woodward Ave near the old Hudson’s
Hopping back on the riverwalk we rode east almost to the bridge to Belle Isle. The trail appears to be a work in progress. We passed some beautifully restored hulking red brick buildings along the water and then rode past some battered and deserted industrial buildings, a few that seemed to be inhabited by young artists. There are also some new waterfront apartments. What a fascinating area. Can’t wait to explore it again. And so happy for Detroit and detroiters.
Spectacular weather so we drove downtown to see how Detroit is doing. Pretty well, especially given the pandemic. We found pockets of entrepreneurial activity and rehabbed houses here and there downtown especially around Wayne State, the Riverfont, and around Union Station. We ended up near what turned out to be the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater overlooking the Detroit River, watching huge barges slowly glide across the River with the RenCen towers rising like some shiny oz in the distance and a bridge to Canada that we cannot cross, due to Covid restrictions, although we did see trucks crossing it. Strange to think we cannot go there.
What a joy to watch live dance on a lovely spring evening WITH OTHER PEOPLE! Thank you Ballet Iowa, Hancher Auditorium and others for a great free performance and return to near-normalcy. The show moves to Iowa City tomorrow and muscatine Sunday
TakeBetsywithyou 