Day Trip To St Joseph Michigan

Everyone was getting cabin (motor home) fever and wanted to check out the area here in Northern Indiana.  Cassie, Jack & Bella wanted to see Lake Michigan so we headed there first to check out the Indiana Dunes seashore.  That was a big disappointment since we couldn't get close to the lake due to parking lots being full and homes built along the shore.  We did manage to drive 20 miles east and found a spot to park for 15 minutes while the three of them went down to the beach.  Not exactly what they had in mind, but under the circumstances it was the best we could do.

We wound up near New Buffalo, MI and saw a sign for blueberries for sale at a u-pick-um farm.  Everyone thought that would be fun and off we went down a dirt road and wound up in the blueberry field.  We only had 1/2 hour to pick what we wanted and wound up with almost 2 lbs of great tasting berries.  Cassie made blueberry pancakes the next morning and they were even better in the pancakes.

We have wild blueberry bushes near the cabin that are about 1-2 ft tall and have very small tasty berries on them.  It takes forever to pick enough to satisfy our taste buds.  

The plants up her are over 6ft tall and loaded with nice sized fruit.  That made it much easier to pick and get enough quickly to satisfy our needs.  I wish we had some wild bushes that tall and fruitful.

This is what 2 lbs of blueberries look like in the bucket.  More than enough for pancakes, blue berry syrup and what ever else we want to do with them.

After leaving the fields we headed for St Joseph, MI about 20 miles away.  It is quite a touristy place with t-shirt shops, restaurants and all the places dedicated to tourism.  They also have numerous sculptures all over the place.  There were too many of them to photograph and put on the blog, but here are a few of them.

We lucked out and snagged a parking place in the center of it all.  The 4 of them went into a few shops and looked over all the goodies there.  Since it was getting late, they stopped shopping and we looked for a nice restaurant.  We wound up sitting outside at Shu's Restaurant along the waterfront.  The shoreline was in view, but it was over a block away.  We had a nice dinner but Bella's spaghetti was so spicy she couldn't eat it.  

Jack and Bella went for a walk and wound up at the Silver Beach Carousel below the bluff in St. Joseph, just yards from Lake Michigan's Silver Beach.  We watched the sunset from the restaurant and then began the 85 mile drive back to Cedar Lake.

It was a long day and we covered a lot of ground and it would have been great to have more time to explore the area.  Maybe another time.

That was our day, how was yours?