Our seventh annual sister's retreat: Part I

I'm so excited to tell you about the great time I had with Ruthanne these last few days. This is the SEVENTH year we have gone away together, to re-connect, relax, see some of the beauty of God's creation, and just enjoy each other.

This year, instead of spending our time together on the shores of Lake Michigan, we decided to try the east side of the state. So I drove to Ruthanne's house Saturday afternoon. My niece Shelley and her little boys were there. We went out to dinner to celebrate Ruthanne's birthday, which was the day before. It was great to get to see Shelley again ... always a bonus to be able to spend time with her and my great-nephews. We had so much fun.

Ruthanne and I left Sunday and headed for the THUMB of Michigan. We spent all of our time traveling around Huron County. Did you know there is 93 miles of coastline in Huron County?
We were in no hurry to get to our destination, because we couldn't "check in" until 3:00 anyway. As we were driving through Lexington, we noticed an Art Fair! Yay! We have wanted to go to an Art Fair together for YEARS. This one was HUGE and ... we had such a blast looking around. The stuff we saw at that Art Fair! Such creative people! We shopped there for two solid hours. The best thing we purchased, though, was the kettle corn ... I should say Ruthanne purchased ... and WE ate! It was the yummiest ~ I had never tasted kettle corn before!
We stayed in Harbor Beach all of the nights of our retreat ~ at a Bed-'n-Breakfast on the main drag of town. But we didn't spend all of our time in Harbor Beach. There are lots of little communities real close by ... so we drove to them and looked around ~ shopped, walked, enjoyed the harbors and breakwaters, and LIGHTHOUSES! Harbor Beach has a lighthouse ... but you can't get very close to it. It is located out on a breakwater that is NOT attached! I zoomed in as best as I could to get this picture.
You can walk on the breakwaters at Harbor Beach ... but they don't connect to the breakwater the lighthouse is sitting on. But still, it was a very pretty place. Harbor Beach boasts that it is "the greatest man-made harbor in the world." We read that on a sign as we were entering the community and mistook it that it meant it was the BIGGEST man-made harbor ... but it isn't! I'm not sure it is the GREATEST either ... but it was pretty enough for us!
After we checked into our Inn, we took a little drive north. Our destination was Port Austin, but we were also looking for Lighthouse Park ... where we could see the Pointe Aux Barques lighthouse! We took a few pictures, but it was frustrating to try and photograph this location!
It's a beautiful place ... but you can only get just so many angles on the lighthouse. And there were white tents that had been set up, possibly for a wedding reception, that blocked our view along with the huge trees on the property.
It's a beautiful tower, isn't it? It is not open to the public; however, the museum is. It was just about closing time, but we did get to go inside and look around quickly.

We drove on from there to Port Austin. Nothing was open on Sunday night, but we did take a nice walk out on the breakwater ...
The sky was amazing ...
And the rocks! There are beautiful rocks along the shores of Lake Huron. We don't have that very much along Lake Michigan, at least not in our area of it.
We were able to get a brief glimpse of the Port Austin Reef Light ... see it way out there? I think it is a mile out in the lake. I've seen close-up pictures of it and would some day like to visit it by boat. I only snapped just a few pictures of it ... they all turned out about the same.
Monday, we did a lot of driving. It was very overcast in the morning and it actually rained! So we drove from place to place only to find out that the majority of little town shops are CLOSED on Mondays! We did get information about a nice place to dine in the evening called Breakers on the Bay just a little beyond Port Austin. So that's where we ate dinner. We were good and hungry too, after driving all over the thumb most of the day only to find all of the shops ... closed! And I'll tell you right off ... don't even bother to drive to Bad Axe to go shopping ... there is absolutely nothing there! But our dinner at Breakers on the Bay was wonderful. The view of the big Lake was SO beautiful.
We drove around between Port Austin and Harbor Beach so many times during our four days, that I can't keep all of the harbors straight! I forget where we were in some of these pictures! I just know that wherever we were was amazingly ... beautiful.
We could not get over these huge rocks that made up so many of the breakwaters in these places. Thousands of them!

This is the Harbor Beach lighthouse again ...
I've uploaded all of the pictures from these four days ... 560 of them! Yikes. I'm dizzy sorting through all of them and so exhausted I can't think! But I can tell you that this was my favorite retreat ever. I love my sister. I love listening to her wisdom. I love seeing the way Christ has worked in her life over the last year. I love the fellowship we share as believers in the same Lord. So even though I am tired ... I feel very refreshed and ... very thankful!