Fennville was only about 20 miles out of our way on the drive back to Chicago from Empire and proved to offer a welcome alternative to the Farmhouse Cafe in Douglas that had a 45-60 minute wait for sandwiches on our trip up north. Instead, we waltzed in and out of the Root Cafe in downtown Fennville in a matter of minutes with great food and service to dine on a dog-friendly patio. Perfect! It has a broad menu – we tried the Cuban sandwich, the turkey sandwich and the mixed salad greens with pulled chicken and bacon. It also has excellent homemade lemonade (pulp and all)! We stopped in Fennville maybe 10 years ago en route to up north and ate at the Blue Goose Cafe, which was fine. Roots Cafe is an even better option.
Tile from Kuilema Pottery Dining al fresco at Root Cafe
The cafe also shared space with a gallery with lots of local or near-local ceramics, (kuilema pottery in Grand Rapids) so I did a wee bit of shopping too. It also sells rustic bread from the well-regarded restaurant /bakery(dinner only) a few doors down called Salt of the Earth, which serves new American cuisines made with seasonal fare from local farmers and producers.
We noticed there is also a cute little Children’s on the small main drag, that looked like a good stop for our grandchildren, next trip!
My best friend from high school PJ lives in the Empire/Glen Arbor area and introduced me to it when we were teenagers in suburban Detroit, visiting her parents cottage on Lake Michigan in Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. So a highlight of the trip is catching up with her and her family, which we did during a lovely afternoon at her beach gathering and cookout with about 15-20 people that stretched into the night, complete with swimming, Petosky stone hunting (no luck, as usual), grilled corn, brats and s’mores, stargazing in the dark, dark sky.
Empire school house mid-restoration
My visit also happened to coincide with the biennial Empire house tour benefiting the impressive contemporary Glen lake community library in Empire so PJ and I visited four homes in Empire and two perched on Glen Lake. Each was very unique and stunning, from a converted 1910 apple barn transformed into a 3-bedroom home to a 1912 arts & crafts bungalow, as well as an ultra modern site-specific architects’ home (“net-zero energy construction,” polished concrete floors inlaid with local beach sones, loft-style great room, native vegetation garden with non-native outdoor pizza oven) and lovely new-construction 12-year-old cottage (“scandi-modern meets cozy farm house”) in the charming sleepy village of Empire to a dramatic modern home tucked into a lakeside hill with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Glen lake (the deep blue cabinets echoing the lake) and a crazy sprawling 1927 log “cabin” also on the lake, in the woods, with origami wood floor, furniture and fixtures mixed with whimsical decor that reminded me of a Wes Anderson movie, complete with collections of peace sign sculptures, stiletto sandals, felt doughnuts hanging from the wood rafters in the sleeping loft, a portrait of Jimmy Hendrix mounted on the cut-stone floor to ceiling fireplace/hearth. I had a definite case of screened porch-envy after the tour.
All the homes had lovely paintings by well-known area artists, whose work PJ took me to see at three Glen arbor galleries including The Center Gallery, part of Lake Street Studios, which has a succession of one week summer shows of various local luminaries. The current show, of rural landscapes by Margo Burian, was almost all sold after just a few days. Other artists with the gallery, which focuses on local work reflecting the local landscape and culture of the sleeping Bear dunes region/Leelanau County include: Joan Richmond, Jessica Kovan, Amanda Ackerman. Other impressive galleries: Synchronicity and ArborGallery, where the saleswoman was a former art teacher at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, my kids’ alma mater.
View from a house-tour home on Glen lake (interior photos verboten)Not on the house tour: our Airbnb in empire, which worked well for us
We took a slight detour to Pyramid Point where we parked our bikes and hiked into the woods for 20 minutes to a high clearing atop a dune looking out at the water in many shades of blue, some worthy of the Caribbean, aqua, navy, greenish, and turquoise.
Dare I say it? The Heritage trail from Glen Arbor north for 10 miles to the end at Bohemian Road was almost prettier than the more traveled portion from Glen Arbor south to Empire. The trail was mostly level and sometimes went along backroads but the backroads were quiet. It paralleled highway M-22 at times but still, not too much traffic. There were crushed gravel portions but nothing too tricky to ride on. And oh the scenery! Shaded, sun-dappled trails through the woods, wide open meadows with a sea of waving purple wildflowers and wooded hills in the distance, startling glimpses of blue lake between the green leafy trees, the odd white birch among the pines and elms, old white farmhouses, bright red wooden barns.
Lunch was chocolate milkshakes and gelato (mint and mocha) at the fabulous new gelato/bakery opened this month by The Grocers daughter, a fancy chocolate shop. Noah and dirck found a pick up pickle ball game on a court in a small park in Empire, west of M-22. My faith in Michigan cherries was restored at a stand on M-22 just north of Empire. (Previous cherries purchased elsewhere were not as good. Mushy and lacking flavor.)
Tonight we returned, as we have every night we’ve been here, to Esch Beach, just south of Empire. At 6 pm the crowd had thinned! It has a wide sandy beach and sandy bottomed lake bottom, with glorious views of the dunes to the north and the wooded hilly shoreline. It also has a designated dog area – we discovered this trip that Millie can swim and lives to go in the water if you throw her a ball to fetch. Linus and Felix both warmed to the water and beach.
I have a habit, perhaps bad, of spending much of my time when revisiting a place trying, often unsuccessfully, to remember where I went last time. Fortunately I have this blog to remind me.
Which is how we ended up in the small pretty village of Northport, while driving north of traverse city in the Leelanau Penninsula along the famously scenic highway M-22 (so famously scenic that it has inspired its M-22 bumper stickers, shot glasses, tees and stores.) The Tribune, a sweet looking restaurant in a former small town newspaper office, was closed (due to it being a Wednesday) but we found good sandwiches nearby at The Bohemian Cafe, next door to a little BBQ place, which, in turn, is next to a shop selling, oddly, beautiful kimonos imported from Japan via the internet.
Like the village of Empire, Northport has retained its small town charm despite becoming gentrified or tourist-fied. There are some high end stores but not too many and not too high-end (although a floor mat made of lobster-catching cords, thick and plastic coated, was $120 at one tasteful store.) And the place still has irreverent and idiosyncratic touches – a sign next to a bunch of old silver knickknacks at an antique/junk shop reading “dead peoples stuff ” and a vending machine with a sign boasting that it’s the worlds first (or only?) goat cheese vending machine. (There was goat cheese in the machine, which we assumed is refrigerated). The waterfront was quiet, lined with lawns, parks, flowers, a marina. The residential streets were quiet too with old cottages and lots of trees and gardens. (This is not the case in other towns like Suttons Bay or even Glen Arbor, which are bustling with tourist attractions.)
Goat cheese vending machine (perhaps the world’s only)
TakeBetsywithyou 