A NORTHERN SUNDAY

Sunday night. Not early, but not too late either.
It has been a busy day.

Church this AM, a 150 year-old church, open only in the summer season.
This is our second year worshipping there in the summer.
It is beautifully cared for by an obviously loving congregation, the members of which must worship elsewhere in the off season.

And then there was breakfast in town…
How sweet it is!

And then, open house at a resort founded in the 1880’s.
We have seen it from the lake for years – and today we visited its 50+ acres.

A central hotel/dining room and many cottages of varying sizes and grounds and woods and beachfront.

There is a pier jutting out from the beach area where last century [19th] a steamer brought guests to the resort from a railroad station.

We got to thinking: in the 1880’s, guests from downstate would travel North not by car but by rail and then, not having a car, would board asmall steamer and travel the 18 or so miles to the resort.

And we thought some more: railroads last century, and by that I mean the 19th, not the 20th, were in the business of building lines to resorts. The world class Grand Hotel of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is one such railroad hotel.

The resort on our lake was not such a facility, but it was serviced by rail and steam boat.
Kinger Lake on the west side of southern Michigan had similar steam service.

Some more thinking reminded us of what a boom time it must have been in North America and the UK in the latter part of the 19th Century. So many lovely places were built then and in one form or another have survived down to our own time.

The dining room at our Lake’s resort is no longer serving meals. All the cottages have been outfitted with kitchens, but some of the furnishings and utensils have been preserved and are on display.
We have never seen so many vinegar cruets all lined up in a row.
And bottles and serving utensils and lake ice tongs and on and on.

And a wooden box labeled Removable Motors for Canoes and Boats Johnson Motors, Elkhart, Indiana [outboard motors].

And a professional band was playing appropriate music – one tune was a sea chantey (sp?), a type of music dear to our hearts ever since we attended a performance by the allegedly only living musician who makes his living as a singer of such important songs on a real ‘tall ship’, one which has no motorized enhancers of sailing equipment.

I would include his name if I was not Up North.

Never have we spent a summer in the North without discovering some new delight.