Ludington

While Scottie un-officially celebrated his MBA graduation from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor earlier this summer, yesterday, we officially celebrated his last examination and the end to studying!  I made my best attempt to cook him some Korean BBQ plus we broke out the champagne that Tara and Brian gave us for our wedding to celebrate!

On Friday afternoon, we took off for the western side of the state to celebrate our 1st Wedding Anniversary and Scottie's official graduation in Ludington!  Although the weekend started off on an ominous note as we arrived in Ludington to a downpour, we quickly settled into our routine arriving at the Candlelight Inn B&B followed by dinner at Jamesport Brewery.  At the brewery, we had the option to select 5 beers out of 10 for the sampler, so I'm pretty sure Nitro Stout was our winner out of the lot.

Beer Sampled	Scottie	Lindsay
Dry Stout
Nitro Stout
Hefeweizen
IPA
ESB
Altbier

Saturday morning, we indulged in a tasty breakfast at our B&B before heading out to the Ludington State Park for hike, which turned out to be more of a walk along the 2-mile Lighthouse Trail to the Big Sable Point Lighthouse.  Standing at 112-feet tall along Lake Michigan, the lighthouse keepers offered $2 tours to the top of the lighthouse.  While it was a short climb of 130 steps to the viewing point, we actually had to wait for a few people ahead of us as the capacity was quite small at the top.

I've been wanting to visit this lighthouse as its featured in a lot of the Pure Michigan campaign ads and in the video below at 0:18.

For the rest of the afternoon, we headed over to the Manistee National Forest to see if we could hike along the Nordhouse Dunes using our our 50 Hikes in Michigan book.  After climbing some stairs at the foot of what we thought was the start of the trail as described in the book, we couldn't find the trail. In retrospect, we might have been on the North end instead of the South end as the book mentioned.  Oh well, we spent a little time trekking along the dunes and lake shore before calling it a day.

On the way back to our B&B, we decided to make up for our failed hike and do some u-pick as we saw an enticing sign to pick blueberries.  We were given old milk jugs with the tops cut off and rope attached to them so we could tie them around our waists for hands-free picking.  Avoiding the flys and bees swarming the blueberry bushes, it took us quite awhile to pick about three-fourths of a milk jug.  We decided that we had enough after about 45 minutes of picking in the heat.

As we entered downtown Ludington, we took another pit stop at the Stearns Park & Beach along Lake Michigan, where we found the North Breakwater Lighthouse.

After showering up, we headed back on the town for dinner at the Sportsman's Irish Pub.  Scottie surprised me too with a MacIntosh apple literally and figuratively for my new MacBrook Pro that I picked out a few weeks later!  One year down, many more to go!  More picture in my photo album.