Elk Lake vacation Part 1

Last week we went on a vacation "up north" and visited our friends at their cottage on Elk Lake.  It's between Grand Traverse Bay and Torch Lake.  The kids had a BLAST and loved life on a lake.  We stayed at the cottage all day Tuesday and Wednesday, playing in the water:

Jessi holding a crayfish.  She liked to be extra floaty with two swim rings AND her life jacket.  She was brave and jumped off the dock and swam around everywhere, though!

Katie with crayfish.  Chris caught them all under rocks near the dock.  The kids made a habitat for their crayfish collection (see orange bucket).

 We went to the Torch Lake fireworks on Wed night.  On Thursday, we went cherry picking!

we got cool buckets for our cherries

Kids stripping a tree of all fruit

Katie and Megan under a bigger tree.  We picked dark red, yellow, and bright red varieties.  All were yummy!

All six kids with their haul!

 We enjoyed cherry milkshakes and fresh cherries for days.  And the kids practiced their cherry spitting enough to get pretty good at it!

The kids went tubing several times.  Here are a few pics:

Abby and Megan standing up in the tube

Katie was the bravest/craziest.

This is as crazy as Jessica got, but she was brave to go in the tube!

After one of the tubing adventures, the kids jumped off the boat and asked if they could swim in to the cottage.  We let them, even though we were quite a ways out.  Chris went with them, and it took quite a while, but they made it!

On Friday, we drove to the Leelenau Peninsula.  We stopped at two wineries for a quick wine tasting, including the Ciccone winery (Madonna's family).  The kids loved wandering through the vineyards, and we got some nice family pics.

We drove up to Leland and enjoyed lunch, fudge, and wandering through Fishtown (aka fish shanties along the river).  There were lots of ditty shops (as Mary would say), and the kids loved the Dam Candy Store, which was right under the dam.

Most nights, we had a campfire with s'mores and sparklers: