Girls weekend.....

 First of all sorry about the wait....Wi-Fi service was not very good at the first hotel in Chalevoix.  I tried to update but kept losing signal.  I did update Facebook on my cell ....as I did have service there.  I did not carry my laptop onward to step 2 as there was some limit to the amt of carry on cases allowed.

So....day 1.  Left the Stony Lake area around 9am.  We received a handcrafted tote bag from Mom and a shiny tiara to start the journey.  Beautiful travels, the trees are changing and the colors of fall are bright.  We kept crossing off guesses along the way.....discarding them as we made turns or changes in directions....we landed in Charlevoix at Castle Farms.  We spent a couple of hours there touring the beautiful castles and gardens.  There were tiny little gnome homes inside the gardens....some statues and an awesome gnome train area.  Very cute.  Temps were cool and the clouds were quite thick for the tour of the castle but NO RAIN!!  The castle was beautiful and history was amazing.  They host weddings there, complete with one BRIDEZILLA!!  There was one bride there that refused to allow us to go in and check out the rooms that were included in 'her area'. We shopped the downtown shops and stayed in Chalevoix Friday night, ordered pizza to the room, picked up adult beverages and played euchre that evening.

Saturday morning we started out for breakfast and ferry tickets to take us to the next stop on our adventure.  The ferry left at 11am....it was a 2 hour ride across Lake Mi to the isle. The lake was rough...3 -5 ft waves challenged our journey...but we made it over and no barf bags needed.  We did not take the van across on the ferry - a valet service van from our hotel was there to greet us and take us to our hotel.  It was a beautiful hotel...Emerald Isle Hotel.  We ventured out on foot to go check out a craft exhibit and the Bite of Beaver Island food expo.  Both were awesome....such a small community up there, so friendly and welcoming!!!
We walked the main drive and shopped the shops, enjoyed the serenity and laughed our tails off frequently!!
The valet van took us to dinner that night to Stony Acre Gill & Donnegal Danny's Pub  The deal is...the hotel takes you there and the pub/diner owners or employees take you home.  It is awesome.  The food was delightful but the people are outstanding!!

The next morning we were again shuttled to and from breakfast upon request.  The adventure was over too quickly...we all agreed that we would have loved to spend at least another day there on the isle.  We learned of tours and adventures that we missed out on as time did not allow....and my bum foot did not help.  Sorry ladies.  The trip back across was much smoother and we passed the 2 hours away quickly by playing Skipbo and RLC.  We shopped a bit more in Chalevoix and then headed home.

A great girls weekend has flown by too quickly again!!  Now, my mom is packing and gathering her goods to begin her southern crawl.  Texas bound where they have sunshine and beaches. She leaves in just 2 weeks again!!  Life needs to slow down so I can catch up!!

Thanks ladies....I had a great weekend again....can't wait til next year!!  XXOO