Wine tasting in review

I'm a bit delinquent in my posting. I lead a busy life, what can I say.

As planned Nicole and I took off for Michigan on a beautiful Friday. As not planned, we stopped and got pedicures on our way out of town (gotta do that now and again), ate lunch at Dominicks (this is a funny concept to me to eat lunch at a grocery store, but apparently it's becoming more and more the trend - hence all the little tables to eat at, I guess.)

I had printed two sets of directions, one to our hotel and one to the art gallery we were thinking about going to so that depending on when we got into town we'd be able to go directly to one. Well, we ended up following the directions to the hotel which took us on a very windy route on the back roads. Even though the gallery and the hotel are in the same small town of Traverse City, mapquest gave us very different directions. We were a little turned around coming into town, but finally figured out where we were.

On Nicole's direction we ate dinner at a lovely local brewery which consisted of outstanding beer/cheese soup and half a pulled pork sandwich. Fearful that splitting the sandwich would leave us hungry (for some unknown reason) we also decided to split an entree salad, which we quickly discovered there was no way we could eat. Veggies always seem to lose out somehow. And while Nicole took hers home and actually ate it the next morning for breakfast, my half is probably still sitting in the hotel room refrigerator.

We then wandered over to the "Art Walk" which was apparently an add-on event to the wine weekend. However the Art Walk people didn't seem to know this. Again, small town, not sure how/why they don't know about their events - especially when they're being cross marketed, but whatever.

We saw some really cool art... and some really not so cool art. I found an awesome watercolor print of a Jack Russel that looks a lot like Irie, so I of course had to purchase that. Nicole ended up buying some fun swimwear that changes color in the sun. Don't ask. :-)

On Saturday we started out early and went against our normal drive to follow the rules and began our wine tasting tour on the wrong side of the peninsula. Technically everyone on the tour is given a starting winery to pick up our tickets and glasses for the weekend, but for various reasons we wanted to start on the other side. Mostly the wineries were cooperative with us, but we did meet a few sticks in the mud.

We spent a little time driving around the Sleeping Bear dunes, hit up the Cherry Republic for all our cherry needs, I had a slice of pie for breakfast (awesome), picked up some good cherry sangria and continued our way around the peninsula.

By 5pm that evening we had hit 9 wineries and had had enough wine for the weekend. We napped at the hotel for awhile and finally managed to drag ourselves out to have dinner.

Still in a bit of a wine coma, I left the electric cooler on in the car all night and woke up to a dead car, which was good excitement. (Always is when you're 6 hours from home on a road trip.) Thankfully I carry jumper cables and the friendly people of Traverse City were there to lend a hand.

We hit up the Grand Traverse Pie Company on our way out of town (this time I refrained from having pie for breakfast) and drove down to Grand Rapids for a little reunion with a friend who lives there. Hit Chicago at about 6pm and declared the road trip a success.

Pictures to follow!