We had a beautiful room, which was like a condo/apartment with kitchen & living room, even a front porch.
This is the view out the front windows, I think this is the first hole of the course. All the windows had beautiful views.
Everyone scheduled for the evening's elk viewing event met at the grill/bar and the horse-drawn carriages arrived. This was the first carriage, which was the one that Kev & I rode in... that's Bill and Bob pulling it.
We took a nice ride through the edge of the golf course, then into the woods. Beautiful property. The owners used to show the elk in the wild, but for many reasons, they started an elk ranch a few years ago. This guarantees seeing the elk. We saw a large group of mostly cows and young. Then we came to the crest of small hill and saw the bulls.
The bulls were feisty, and fighting a little bit with each other. They were bugling quite often. There is no other sound like it, especially when you're standing that close.
These animals are definitely not tame. The guide told everyone to stand at least 4 feet back from the fence. With good reason. The bull elk were totally aware of our presence, and it seemed like they enjoyed intimidating us.
This guy saw me while I was down a little ways from the rest of the party, he did a little sprint over and charged the fence at me. Scared the living shit outta me. They are large animals with seriously large antlers. And he so knew he had scared me, then he went down the fence a little ways and charged at Kev. Showing off. I was very glad the fence is strong.
The guide explained that the bulls like to get in the mud because the ladies like it. It's mating season now, which is called the rut. Lots of mud-covered bulls.
After a while, we all got back on the carriages. There were 4 carriages in all, each carrying about two dozen people. We rode back through the woods on a trail along a river and came into a clearing. There sat a large log cabin. This is where our dinner was to be held.
Inside was beautiful, lots of knotty pine and mounts on the walls, and a huge stone fireplace. Large round tables were set up, and we were all assigned to a table. It was nice and warm in there, and it smelled so good.
A husband and wife own the resort, Jack and Jan. Jan cooks the dinner for everyone on two antique wood cookstoves. Dinner was wonderful. Each course was completed in front of us.
We started with shrimp cocktail and an apple tart, then a cup of perfect chicken noodle soup with a crusty croissant, followed by a unique salad, then the main course of pork crown roast and red skinned potatoes. Dessert was 3 small flutes of crunchy something wonderful filled with white chocolate mousse with raspberry sauce. Everything was absolutely wonderful. There were also 2 wine choices with dinner, a nice table white and a merlot. Both were good. The other wines we tasted were blueberry, pear, cranberry and raspberry. Far too sweet for me. There aren't many wineries on the sunrise side of the state, so it was nice to try some from one of the first established. I think it was called Stoneybrook. I'm just not a fan of fruit-other-than-grapes type of wine.
We rolled ourselves back into the carriages, which, thank goodness, we weren't driving! Had a beautiful ride through the woods, with a full moon giving lots of light. It was perfect. Slept ok, got up early, had a nice breakfast (also included) and headed for home. We went by a Michigan Magazine museum, which wasn't open, but the big head made us turn around and stop in anyway. It's stone. (And notice the beautiful colors of the trees.)
It's also very large. Kev is six feet tall.
We saw a bunch of cool stuff on the drives to and from Hillman. I took tons and tons of photos. Kev noticed these shoe trees.
There's a shoe tree near where my brother & his family live, and when something momentuous happens, folks go and throw their shoes in the tree.
I happen to know those red and white sneakers are pretty expensive. Makes me wonder what wonderful thing happened that their owner wanted to add them to the tree.
I couldn't pass the Sap Shanty by... Kev turned around for me so I could photograph it, too.
We stopped at one of those places that sells cement statuary and bought an interesting frog. He'll be a topic for another post.
Then when we got near home, I had to get my camera out again. Just a mile before our road is a big field, and standing in the field were several tall birds.
I had to look them up. They are Sandhill Cranes. Beautiful. Must have been a quick stopover for them, because they were gone the next day.
It was a great little trip for us, nice to be away together. Maybe we'll have to find that old sap shanty come this spring...
No comments:
Post a Comment