Texas or bust

We were not excited to leave Michigan, but had to head home eventually.  

We checked out of the hotel, stopped at Rosie's for one last breakfast and headed home.

To Illinois!

Ok, so we really just stopped for about four hours at my parents house.  I still had a few things left there, and my parents had taken all of our wedding presents home, and we needed to pick up my cat!

Mom had picked up lunch from LaGondola.  I always miss having LaGondola near by, and Cody had never had it before.  For my out of state readers (Hi Belinda!) LaGondola is a local spaghetti and italian sub place.  We get their subs (gondolas): sweet bread, salami, ham, cheese and lettuce.  Simple but so good.

My Grandma, sister and nephews came over to visit one last time too!  The boys had been talking with Jamie about where I was moving too on the way over, and as soon as Owen walked in he climbed in my lap and told me "I need a mooch and a squeeze!" He doesn't like living 'far away' as he always puts it.

Pretty present from an art gallery/antique shop in  Colorado. Thanks Uncle Lowe!

We opened gifts, visited, and then got to work packing up the car.

22 bottles of wine (please don't break!), luggage for two weeks for two people, one cat, one litter box, and a gazillion wedding presents.  It was quite a squeeze but with a lot of help from Mom and Jamie we got it all to fit.

That was about the point we realized there was no way to get our luggage out and we'd be driving straight through.

O and E played in the car while we packed it up.

I was worried about how Zoey would handle the car ride.  She stresses out going to the vet 20 mins away.  

15 minutes into the drive and she was already out of her cage and snuggled down with Cody.
She did wonderfully.  Mostly chilled in her cage but would come out and sit on a lap and watch cars or snooze.  A big car transporter passing us did scare her though, which was pretty funny.

 Last glimpse of the Arch in St. Louis. Yeah, I had to look through that for a week!

Obviously the straight through ride to Texas was not super fun.  Both of our allergies went crazy, and we were both super tired, especially Cody since sleeping in my little car is not easy, but we made it.  We arrived in Texas the next morning, with all 22 bottles of wine intact!

Oh yeah, remember how Dad was all "Oklahoma is great!  You can drive through in the middle of the night and not see a single deer!"?  Not true.  They all waited for me to be the one driving through Oklahoma, in the middle of the night in the rain, to cross the road.

Honeymooning in Michigan: Leftovers

Cody thought this gas station/restaurant was funny.

We didn't eat here, but we did get gas.

We have a ton of pictures of me reading various things.  Not sure why....

Our 'wedding present' from McDonalds.  The lady in the drive up saw the car windows and was so excited for us.  The little boy toy was kinda like a bobble head, which was amusing, but wouldn't stay on the dashboard. 

My chill sleeve!  I had been looking for one once and finally found one that I liked at a winery we stopped at.  It's pretty cool, just freeze and then wrap around the bottle to chill your wine in 15 mins.  Works pretty well, and for extra coldness when we put the sleeve on we just pop the whole thing back in the freezer for good measure.  

Went for a bike ride, and stopped to swing.  

Lunch at Round Barn.  Pulled pork sandwich with tropical salsa, very good!

Enjoying Round Barn.

Just a warning, I am very awkward on video. 

I feel like I am always posting pictures of myself, but since Cody is our resident photographer he doesn't end up in a lot of pictures. We need to work on that!

I think that pretty much wraps up our trip to Michigan.  Next up, driving home to Texas!

Honeymooning in Michigan: St. Joseph

We had talked about driving to Kalamazoo for a day, but then we visited Lemon Creek Winery and chatted with a lady there about St. Joseph.  With the promise of beaches, a light house, museums, shops and food we decided to check it out.  A short 30 minute drive led us here: 

I LOVED this beach.  It was so pretty!

Look! That lighthouse we were looking for!  

We walked down this very long pier to check out the lighthouse.  I think we are about halfway down at this point in the picture.  It was crazy windy at the end, but really neat.  We also saw a bunch of guys fishing off the pier. 

We went into town and stopped at a museum.  They had an exhibit highlighting their local art fair from the year it started to present day.  30 years or so.  It was interesting to compare to the art fair I worked on, and see the difference in art displayed.  Although their exhibit labels needed some serious help.  Seriously.  

As we were walking down the main street of town, we got caught in a sudden rain storm.  It lasted about  10 mins and we got pretty wet but still were able to see the war memorials along the way.

World War II Memorial

Koren War Memorial

I don't remember what the cannon was memorializing. 

Pirates? Civil War?  I'm gonna go with pirates. 

We found a local pizza place that was really good for lunch.  Hanging outside was this guy:

It's a corn dog!

They had a few of these dog statues around town decorated differently.  Not sure why.  This one cracked me up!  I seriously could not stop laughing.  It's a dog...dressed up like corn...it's a corn dog bahahahaha!  Still pretty funny!

After lunch Cody surprised me by taking me to ride the carousel!  

I have always loved carousels, and this one was pretty awesome!

Why yes, that is a box of pizza shoved in my purse.

I made Cody ride the ostrich (after almost being attacked by one once, it seemed fitting) while I got the fire department horse, with a Dalmatian riding on it's back.

Then we found some circus fun 

I don't look to happy with my big forehead...

It was a pretty fun trip to St. Joseph.  We actually talked about staying there if we go back to Michigan, but decided we liked visiting St. Joseph and staying in the quieter New Buffalo. 

Honeymooning in Michigan: Out and About

One of the first days we went driving around to see what all was in the area.  We stumbled across Mt. Baldy National Park, just over the state line in Michigan City, Indiana.  We definitely wanted to check out the sand dunes and see if you can climb them like the ones in Colorado.

Do I look freakishly pale or what?  Hopefully Texas is changing that.

The sign basically explains how all of the visitors climbing this particularly area has destroyed the natural grasses that keep the sand dune in place.   With no grasses the dune is eroding and will cover the parking lot (where I am standing) in a few years time.

They did have a designated climb area though, so we trekked to the top.  It was pretty awesome.  Minus the nuclear plant like smoke stack in the distance.  That was just eerie, and was cropped out of the picture.  I wanted to climb down the other side of the dune and check out the beach, but Cody didn't think I would like the steep climb back up.

So we climbed down the dune the way we came, and I convinced him to take the path to the beach.  After all, it didn't have the strenuous warning sign the dune peak path had.  The main difference though was it was hot! More trees and at a lower altitude I guess. Still, the beach was pretty cool.  Literally. That water was freezing! Pretty much killed any idea of swimming while we were there. We were a month too early for good swimming water!  

We also spent a morning checking out all the little shops in town.  They didn't have a whole lot, but some were really neat, while others were your typical beach town touristy shops.

We also walked down to the little beach front not far from our hotel.  It was pretty nice, and definitely would have been handy location wise if it was nice enough to swim.  

Holding the drinks, while Cody snapped pictures.

We also walked around checking out all the vacation condos and ignoring signs saying things like "Owners only, no trespassing" so Cody could take pictures.

There was another sand dune National Park not far from the hotel in Michigan.  This one had more dunes and were larger than the first one we stopped at.  Unfortunately this day was quite chilly and rainy so we snapped some pictures, chased some seagulls (ya know to snap some more pictures) and called it a day.  Needless to say, our car was quite sandy on the way home!

Honeymooning in Michigan: Exploring the Local Eateries

After all that wine, we needed a break...and food!

The Stray Dog Bar and Grill.  Right down the street from the hotel.

We sat on their roof top patio, nice view but hot!
Frozen strawberry vodka lemonade. 

Back at the hotel, enjoying drinks and a cigar by the water.
Our usual drinks....Godfather for Cody.  Rossini for me.

Whoops, my food post is turning back into a drink post!
We checked out the local hot spot, Redamak's.  Apparently they served the best burgers, the burger to end all burgers, the burger that put New Buffalo on the map!

That would be the menu.  It was bigger than my head.

Our verdict? Good.  But not as good as they made them sound.  Plus they were kinda pricey for burgers.   Now if they had been as awesome as they were suppose to be I wouldn't have minded as much.  Subpar expensive burgers? Just sad.  They really got you by charging you separately for everything.  Plus, you couldn't even order lettuce and tomato.   We weren't sure how they could claim to be so good with out those.  

Rosie's Diner.  YUM  We stopped in here one morning to have a hot breakfast instead of our muffin, fruit and yogurt basket from the hotel.  

So good we ended up eating breakfast here for the rest of our stay.  Wish we had discovered it on day one!  (although the hotel basket to our room was awesome too) Basically everyone working at the restaurant was somehow related to the original owner, current owners, or friends of the family.  I got the belgian waffle everyday, it was so good.  Best part? Their service was crazy quick!  Like after ordering we had our food in 5 minutes.  We thought it was a fluke the first day....nope they are that good everyday!

Oinks!  We found this place the first day I think.  Within walking distance from the hotel....although really what wasn't within walking distance?  I had found this ice cream place online, and knew we needed to check it out!  Once there we found it packed.  We weren't sure we really wanted to stand in line, but hey it was late and I wanted ice cream!  They literally had you take a number and then step off to the side and wait until you were called.  Worked out because it gave you time to check out the massive menu, and actually went fairly quick.  I got peach ice cream in a waffle cone, and I think Cody's was just chocolate waffle cone.  Both were very good!  Wish we had gone back again to try more flavors. 

Up next...I'll work on a post that doesn't involve food and drinks...maybe. ;)

Honeymooning in Michigan: Wine Trail

The hotel gave us a list of events going on around town during our stay so our first full day there we started exploring.  First stop was a farmers market.  It was kinda small, but actually had a good variety of produce, art and bakery items.  Everything looked awesome, but we settled for just trying a whoopie pie with buttercream filling. Yum!  

The area we were at in Michigan had a wine trail with many different types of wineries to visit.   We planned our first visit in time for lunch.  The Round Barn Winery was having a festival of sorts.  I was expecting lots of people, craft booths, wine, music.  Kinda like the Marigold or Pumpkin Festival from back home.  Not so much.  They had someone singing and were serving lunch.  Not what I was expecting but still a good time. The also had a brewery, distillery, and winery all on site so we got to try wine, beer, and their vodka made from grapes. All awesome.

Ceiling inside the round barn

We followed the trail for the next few days.  I'm not sure how many wineries we went to, but we averaged about 4 or 5 a day I would say.  We liked the estate wineries best, meaning the wineries that used all their own local grapes, versus making it with some Michigan grapes, some California grapes and shipping the blend in.  Of course, each winery we stopped at we bought a few bottles of wine.  Or half a case at each. Same thing.  :) I was a little worried about getting all 22 bottles back to Texas but with the help of Mom and Jamie we packed it all in!

Driving from winery to winery

Lots of grape vines.

Wine in the making.
The lids floated...not sure why now...something to do with the process I'm sure! 

We must have been too busy drinking our wine to take pictures of any. This is the only picture we seem to have that has wine in it, and the glass looks close to empty!  Actually...I think this was the vodka.  Oh well, it was really good vodka!

Honeymooning in Michigan

We left the day after our wedding to head to Michigan!  

We stayed 5 days in New Buffalo at the Harbor Grand Hotel.

The hotel was fantastic.  Complimentary bike and dvd rentals, Ben and Jerry's available 24/7, and excellent restaurant, massage services, and complimentary breakfast delivered to your room.  We took advantage of everything!  We watched a movie I think every night, got massages which were fantastic, went swimming, and loved our room.  We had a fireplace, huge bathroom, and great view of the harbor:

 Also found a bottle of champagne in our room when we arrived! 

 I kept my bouquet all week fresh in an ice bucket.

We headed downstairs to the restaurant for supper.  Actually ate here twice, and we both got the same thing both times because it was sooo good!  I had their specialty, spinach ravioli with cream, tomato, and pesto sauce.  Fresh hand made pasta too!

I drank Rossini all week....champagne with strawberry puree and Cody found a new drink: the Godfather. (not pictured, that's of course a local beer)

and dinner was followed by complimentary...actually I'm not sure what they were called. Cookies? I do know they had ricotta cheese baked in them and were fantastically good.  First bite kinda tasted like licorice and then just followed by sweet yumminess. Plus, look how cute!

Coming up next: Exploring town!