Cheboygan

For Labor Day weekend Bob and I directed ourselves north for a weekend of partial relaxation and a ton of fun with family. We headed out late Friday night and arrived at Bob's parent's cabin in Harrison. We spent the night and Bob did his traditional golf game with his dad Saturday morning. After a relaxing morning spent at the cabin, we headed back south to pick up Bobby and her boyfriend Jake at his family cabin on Lake Montcalm. We spent a couple hours hanging out with Jake's family getting a boat ride tour of the lake. It was a perfect day to be on water! From there, we began our journey north to Cheboygan. We had planned earlier in the summer to take the Michigan Inland waterway tour on that weekend with my cousins, Brandon, his fiancee Kim, Andy and his wife Jen.



Bob and I had been wanting for the last couple years to travel this Inland waterway after hearing of good times spent just cruising in a boat. The Indian River waterway begins south of Burt Lake and flows north through Mullet Lake and out to Lake Huron. Because we couldn't find a place to stay on the southern part of the river, we ended up deciding to head from Cheboygan south to Burt Lake. Now this is backwards from the way most people do it, but we really didn't have a choice because of short planning. So we ended up crashing at the Best Western in Cheboygan. We got very lucky in our rooms, as we could walk right out of our hotel room down to the boat as it floated in the Cheboygan River.

We arrived at the hotel at 5:30 or so, with the cousins patiently waiting our arrival. We cracked a couple beers and relaxed with the music floating out of our neighbor's boat that was tied up to the dock. Because MSU had their first football game that night, it was imperative to Bob that we found a venue that we could sit and watch the game at. The hotel directed us to this restaurant/bar that was highly recommended. When we arrived at this place, we were all shocked... we were looking for something more of a sportsbar, not some 5 star restaurant. So we left and ended up finding a couple "Bob and Dawn" bars that we could just set and enjoyed ourselves without the fear of offending someone for our loudness.


Sunday morning we awoke to a beautiful sunshiny day. We dropped the boat in the water, bought our few lunch groceries and packed up the boat for a day on the water. We headed down the Cheboygan River talking, dancing and enjoying the day. We drifted on Mullet Lake until noon and headed back north to the party store so we could get some beverages and what not. As we were headed back towards Mullet Lake, we drifted into some of Brandon's friends, so we ended up turning around and following them out to Lake Huron (we never made it to Indian River, LOL, the main reason for the trip). Once on Lake Huron, we didn't stay out long as one of our boat windows decided to shatter for no apparent reason. We picked up the mess and headed back towards the hotel. We arrived at the hotel, sat and relaxed and visited and enjoyed each others company.

All in all it was a great weekend. We had a blast hanging out with family we don't get to see nearly enough. We want to do the trip next year again... but I think we'll start at Burt Lake like everyone else so we can get the whole effect of a day drifting down the river in our boat!