New England Adventure 2022

It’s fall. Blue Heaven is on the hard. Time for a Road Trip! Priscilla and I have embarked on a 17 day driving adventure to New England. Our first stop is the Neighborhood Hotel Grand Beach in New Buffalo, Michigan. Priscilla read an article in the Forest Bluff magazine regarding a boutique hotel tucked away on the shores on SE Michigan. Done. Here we are for three days. Then on to New Hampshire to visit my brother Bill and then to Wells, Maine to visit with Priscilla’s sisters Laura and Sarah. A highlight will be the price of lobster in Maine is almost free. The final stop is Framingham, Ma to visit with Alison, Oscar and Jackson.

We arrived in New Buffalo at 4:00 pm and self checked into our hotel room. There are no staff on site. We were sent a digital code to enter the lobby and our hotel room. We will also self check out when we depart. We are in a a forested area near the beach. There are 14 units of which 3 are occupied. It is off season but we have nice weather with temperatures in the low 70’s F.

We set out to explore New Buffalo and made our first stop to Barney’s grocery store to buy coffee and sugar. We brought Keurig cups but the hotel room did not have a Keurig machine. Next stop was to find a spot on the beach for Priscilla to take one of her trade mark sunset photos. We drove all around the shoreline looking for a photo opportunity. The vast majority of the shoreline is private property. We drove many miles and finally arrived at New Buffalo Beach. We could see the sun was setting below the horizon so I drove as quickly as I could to the shore and Priscilla leaped out of the car with her camera phone in hand. In a mater of seconds the sun set below the horizon. There were a hundred or more people on the beach watching the sunset. Many brought chairs and some were sitting on the roofs of their cars.

Ironically we were only a half mile from Barney’s grocery store. Tomorrow we will not be denied Priscilla’s sunset photo. Across the street from Barney’s is a Methodist church that has been converted into the Beer Church Brewery. They claim this is one of the few churches that is at full capacity seven days a week. The beer theme is also sacrilegious. My IPA is called Pontius Pilate and the lager is called Crooked Cross.

We returned to our hotel and watched a documentary on the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and Everest. The devastation was unbelievable. The documentary is “Aftershock the Everest and Nepal Earthquake.” A friend held a fund raiser at his restaurant to help the survivors. He had climbed Everest and had many friends in Nepal. I made a donation. Now that I see the extent of the devastation I would have donated more.

On Tuesday we will meet our friends Peter Fisher and Vicki at Seedz brewery in nearby Union Pier, Michigan.