It’s our last week in Michigan, and as glorious as this month of summering has been, I’m looking forward to the “flow” tide after this much needed “ebb” has restored us. I’ve done very little work the past few weeks, trading my usual creative hustle for long, slow days with the kids where we walk to the lake, intending to return after ten minutes, and three hours later finally make it back. I never knew blessed nothingness could feel so full and take up so much time.

But I miss the creative hustle and am ready to pour time into ideas and work I’ve shelved this month. And we miss Brett, and our home, and our beds, and our friends, and silly little parts of our normal routine that will suddenly feel new and extraordinary when we return home–like making coffee in my own kitchen with my favorite mug, or walking to the neighbors to borrow half & half and remembering how much I love our little life at home.

I’ve been sharing photos of summers in Michigan for years now and don’t want to be redundant with travel posts. If you’ve followed here for long, you know the drill–we go to the same places every year, and I gush about my love for these lakes and these woods and the way watching the sunset from the sand dunes is a storybook experience that will feed your soul. I conclude in fifth grade persuasive essay style with a convincing plea to put Northern Michigan on your bucket list, and I support it with good reasons plus 500 photos of beautiful Michigan things.

This Mackinac Island post is a heartfelt ditto to posts of previous years.

Dash went into his annual Mackinac Island Horse Trance.

…and I prepped him with his own tiny horse name journal this year so he could put his kindergarten writing skills to good use. He yells to the carriage drivers, “What’s the horses’ names?!” as they pass and records their answers in his book so that by the time we leave the island, he has pages full of horse duos–Sporty & Oliver, Kelly & Pearl, Amber & Jude.

Our friends who moved from Naples to Chicago last year came with us to the island this year, and it was so much fun introducing them to all our favorite things to explore.

We’ve been waiting years to ride bikes on the island, an experience we’ll never miss now. You can bike the entire perimeter of the island (8.2 miles), and there are no cars competing for road space.

We biked to Arch Rock, a gorgeous natural limestone formation that sits high (240 stairs!) above Lake Huron.

I always receive a flood of direct messages with island questions when we’re there, so here’s a little 411 wrap-up.

Is it super expensive?
There are several different ways to explore the island on different budgets. You can take a morning ferry, explore all day and return home without staying on the island; but staying overnight is half the fun as once the last ferry leaves, there’s a certain magic about being stuck (and we could never cram in everything we want to do in one day!). You could definitely spend a week on the island with family and have enough to explore, but we usually arrive in the morning, stay overnight and take a late ferry the second day for two full days on the island. We always say we wish we would have booked two nights when we leave though because we’re never ready to say goodbye. Star Line Ferry usually offers a half-off ferry ticket sale 1-2 times throughout the year (If I recall correctly, we’ve purchased half price tickets on Black Friday and Valentine’s Day) which saves us a lot of money for the entire family. A regular priced ferry ticket is $25 round trip for adults and $15 for kids. I follow Mackinac Island accounts on social media so I don’t miss any sales (and Michigan Instagram readers who know I love the island are always so good about messaging me when there’s a Mackinac deal–thank you!) We try and book our hotel March/April for a good deal. The Grand Hotel is the most famous hotel on the island, but it’s very expensive. We’ve stayed at the Island House, Harbor View Inn and Mission Point for anywhere between $200-$250 a night. I’d definitely suggest staying off Main Street (away from the main tourist area).

We did the ghost tour this year, and I don’t know if it was our tour leader or the tour itself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. We all got really bored and thought Poppa could tell way better ghost stories.

This was Nella after the tour (we scooted out early): OVER IT.

Where should we eat?
If you eat at only one restaurant on the island, make it Woods, the island’s best secret. It’s literally hidden up in the woods in the interior of the island, next to Stonecliff mansion and away from the main tourist attractions. It was built in 1915 by one of the mansion owners as a playhouse for their children and is now a restaurant with the most enchanting ambience–fireplaces, candles, tables tucked into cozy nooks, a hunting lodge style cocktail bar and a hidden duckpin bowling alley in the back.

Woods is about a 30-minute carriage taxi ride from the main island road ($7.50/adult one way–half price for kids).

Other new experiences on the island this year…

The new Watercolor Cafe hidden behind the Bayview Bed & Breakfast. It feels like a secret–quiet, tucked against the harbor, delicious food (get the peanut butter and banana toast!), the most beautiful view on the island, and so many things for kids to explore–art supplies, kids books, tables set up for creating things. We stayed for two hours and could have easily stayed longer.

Several island lovers messaged me this year and told me about the Grand Hotel’s secret garden in the woods, so we added that to our list this year as well and, per usual, were not disappointed. We explored the trails in the woods next to the Grand Hotel and not only found the secret garden but a flower-filled greenhouse as well.

Everything feels like a children’s storybook on the island…

 

…and we’re always sad to step on the fairy the night we leave and watch our enchanting summer place slowly disappear as we go home.

Until next year…

 

There are two environments I’ve experienced in life that have made me feel completely renewed and at home. One is the mountains, even though I have never lived there. The other is alongside a lake in the Midwest during the summer. I tried to describe it more clearly to Brett the other day as the sky shifted into its enchanting evening mode and the first lightning bugs came out for their matinee performance.

“You know how people describe seeing the Amalfi coast? Or waking up in Tuscany?” I ask him. “That’s how I feel here. There’s a summer magic here that literally takes my breath away–it’s a happy calm I can’t quite describe.”

“I think you’re forgetting what it’s like here in February,” Brett retorts. “It’ll take your breath away alright.” He laughs hard at his dad joke, as he often does.

“LET ME HAVE MY MAGIC, OKAY?” I yell back.

Maybe that’s part of the magic–the fact that a Midwest summer is so fleeting and that people here have to endure a hellish climate for way too long while waiting for their seasonal flower to bloom, so that when it comes, you notice and drink in every glorious thing about it. I wouldn’t doubt there’s also some nostalgia tangled up in my love affair, the spell of childhood delights reawakened when I’m back on soft grass with a pebbled lake shore nearby.

Whatever the case, I wait for this all year–and to see my family enjoying all my summer loves makes me ridiculously happy.

“I see you quite enjoying evening fishing with a lake breeze,” I point out to Brett. “You think I don’t notice you all blissed out next to that campfire? Don’t pretend like you’re not in love with it too. Admit it, you like it here.”

“…in the summer,” he’s careful to add.

This week, we’re actually back to Brett’s old summer stomping grounds–Delavan Lake, Wisconsin–while we’ve been waiting for Lainey to finish her first sleep away camp. We dropped her off last week–a goodbye that was hard for many reasons. Camp was a big decision for her, but one we know will give her priceless life lessons and summer memories. Longest time we’ve ever been apart from each other, and…with no contact. (spoiler alert: we picked her up this morning, and all is well! The camp songs! The chants! The stories of secret camp rituals, cabin pranks and counselor skits! All the summer magic!)

I’ve never spent a summer in Wisconsin before and am delighted by how much it feels like Michigan. We spent most of our first week at a friend’s empty lake house and are finishing up Brett’s part of our vacation at a lake resort on Lake Delavan.

Some favorites so far…

The swing. We visited a friend’s house in Rockford before heading to the lake, and the girls fell in love with the swing outside her house. The next morning, we found it on a grocery run to Walmart (only $35!) and brought it back to hang from the most perfect swing branch in the history of mankind–a sturdy arm of an old enchanted willow tree extending over the water. The leaves draped all around the swing, creating a little foliage grotto straight out of a storybook.

Dash fell asleep in it one afternoon, and slept for two hours.

Lainey and Dash read books in it another afternoon. And early one evening, I went out with Nella, intending to swing for a few minutes but woke up later to a dark night sky and Nella sound asleep next to me.

Dash has spent hours fishing–my new favorite hobby for him. He sat in a chair–quietly, alone–for HOURS, patiently waiting for a fish. He caught many…

…and shared the love.

He also found a new best friend–a stick he named Max. We are inspired by Max’s perpetual state of summer excitement, his arms raised in an exuberant “WOOHOO!” forever. We will be taking him home with us because we will need his mojo come the first week of school.

Painting rocks has become a summer tradition now. We paint them by the lake with music and snacks and take the finished products to the nearest town, hiding them in store windows and planters for others to find and take home. The first time we did this, we were staying in Blairsville, Georgia where we evacuated for Hurricane Irma and learned that the painted rock treasure hunt was an actual ongoing activity in the town (store owners even hide them in their shops!). We were hooked.

Making things on summer vacation is definitely one of my favorite things to be happy about. “You know you’d have more room in your suitcase if you didn’t bring half the inventory of Michael’s, right?” Brett says. Almost everything we make on summer vacation, we make in open air. We paint in the grass, craft bracelets on picnic tables, journal in the hammock. I even bring all our cherry pie ingredients outside, and we put them together on the back deck at my dad’s. It’s so creatively invigorating to make things in nature and to change up normal create routines.

And as always, I stash all the love, all the feelings, all the inspiration that comes from the magic of a Midwest summer and store it in the reserves to take home come August. The last few years, going home at the end of the summer isn’t depressing. I’m always ready to put to use back home what I’ve gathered from all this good.

Meanwhile, we’re still in stash mode. On to Michigan this week!

(Long post warning, but I have so much to say about St. Augustine!)

We just returned from the first of our summer adventures–a trip that was originally going to be to North Georgia, but we decided we didn’t want to be in the car that long. Brett suggested St. Augustine (5 hours from us–8 if you count construction traffic and torrential rain on the way there) because I’ve been saying for years I wanted to visit. I’m so happy we ended up there because SO CHARMING–not to mention the fascinating history buried in every corner of the city.

I’ve never been so enraptured with a city’s history. After our historic carriage tour, I spent the evening in the Internet abyss of St. Augustine research, from the story of Henry Flagler who founded much of the city’s landmarks (and his three wives) to the important role the city played in the civil rights movement. Bonus–GHOSTS! St. Augustine is widely known for being haunted, a little fact we had a lot of fun with. We didn’t go on any of the ghost tours the city offers, but we did create our own nightly ghost explorations on our neighborhood walks, assisted by Lainey’s ghost app that alerted us to several ghosts lurking in deserted homes and properties.

Where do I even begin with this city? Let’s go back–way back to some of the history here. I took one historic tour and basically consider myself a St. Augustine tour guide now, so humor me. St. Augustine is our nation’s oldest continuously occupied city.

Many original houses and buildings restored from the city’s earliest days still stand, and most of the surrounding structures are reconstructions of buildings that were destroyed so that much of the city’s history and Spanish architecture has been preserved. You can feel that history everywhere–mostly on St. George Street and the narrow side streets that hold hours of exploration with restaurants and shops.

We knew we wanted to visit the fort on this trip, and it didn’t disappoint. Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest and largest masonry fort in the continental U.S., is now as a national park. Built in 1672 (when construction began–it took 20 years to build!) out of coquina stones, it served to protect and defend Spain’s claims in the new world. It can actually be classified as a castle, complete with thick walls, battlements, towers and a moat. Thank goodness the skies were a little gray the day we visited, cooling us down a bit (it was HOT).

As with everything else in St. Augustine, of course there is an interesting ghost history with the fort as well, especially the story of the secret lovers whose skeletons were found in the dungeon.

The top of the fort made me very nervous though–low walls, lots of openings, no railings…Dash.

 

Much of the city’s most impressive landmarks can be attributed to Henry Flagler, a Standard Oil partner with John Rockefeller, who arrived to St. Augustine in the 1880’s, bought up much of the local railroads and attempted to establish St. Augustine as a winter resort for elite Northerners. He poured money into the city, commissioning a fancy New York architectural firm to build a number of extravagant churches and buildings, including the Ponce de Leon Hotel  which is now Flagler College. I took the Flagler College tour alone one morning, and it was impressive–another opportunity to learn more about the fascinating stories behind the city’s history but also a great way to see inside the old hotel. It’s like Hogwarts inside! The college houses the largest collection of Tiffany glass, and the Tiffany windows alone in the building are insured for $132 million.

I highly suggest a historical tour of the city–Old Town Trolley offers many, but we took the horse and carriage route. It was one of Vacation Brett’s famous spontaneous splurges (I love this about him on vacation). He saw a woman stop to feed her horses where the kids were playing, walked up to her and whispered, “How much to take my family on a tour?” And two seconds later, we were all climbing in.

I think my favorite history of the city was found in Lincolnville, the neighborhood where we stayed and a community founded after the Civil War. It contains the city’s largest concentration of late Victorian Era homes and played an important role during the civil rights movement. A reader sent me this article while we were visiting, a story I did not know but am so glad I read. It made me appreciate so much more the history behind the charming streets we walked every day and the beautiful homes we passed, many of them looking no different than I imagined they did then.

And finally, all my favorites from this trip, so many of them suggested by you all on Instagram (I always get my best travel recs from you!):

First, as touristy as some of these destinations may be, there’s something about that old Florida tourist vibe that makes me feel so nostalgic. I grew up going to Florida on vacation, visiting my grandparents while they wintered here in their Airstream and later visiting cities like Tarpon Springs and Orlando with friends. I love how so many parts of Florida feel like they’ve never changed–the old seafood restaurants, the shell shops, the tourist boutiques that sell salt water taffy and orange bubble gum balls next to “Wish You Were Here” post cards and shell necklaces. We did all the touristy things, and we loved them.

In the St. George Street area, we loved Pizalley’s Pizza…

Prohibition Kitchen late at night…

Mayday Ice Cream (the Parent Trap flavor with Oreos and Peanut Butter!)

Casa de Maya
We ran in the back covered patio there because it was the closest building when it started pouring and ended up trapped there for two hours. It was magic–kids played games and we drank cold beer.

Cousteau’s Waffle & Milkshake Bar (the Pele Dos Santos flavor–nutella and bananas–SO GOOD!)…

Theatre Magic Shop (the kids loved this sweet little place, and we came home with three tricks)

Hyppo Popsicle

We also loved Davenport Park with $1 carriage rides (made a sweet memory there watching the kids under the carousel while we huddled under an umbrella and it poured around us)

Vilano Beach

And our very favorites were tucked in our neighborhood. We walked to Preserved restaurant for dinner one night, around the corner from our house, and enjoyed an enchanting evening listening to old cocktail music with wine and the most delicious dinner ever.

My favorite from the whole trip was Ice Plant, a few blocks from our house–loved it so much, we went twice. It looks like an old factory (and originally was an old ice plant) and feels like something out of the Prohibition era. Vintage bar, cozy and dark at night and known for their cocktails and ice pairings (who knew–ice is an art!). We had the BEST salty dogs there. And all the food is farm to table.

And a block from our house was The Blue Hen, a famous breakfast favorite. Darling retro decor and out-of-this-world biscuits with peach butter. I was smitten with all the old Pyrex and Tupperware.

We walked a lot, felt safe everywhere we were–even late at night–and made a lot of sweet memories in the house we rented. Best hide-and-seek house ever.

Grateful for adventure and my favorite people to adventure with…

And now I just got off an hour phone conversation with my brother, the history buff of the family, gushing about every little detail of our trip, this city, and all the stories we learned.