As we approach the second year of stewardship of the Horton Bay General Store, we wanted to take time to reflect on the many conversations from our inaugural summer. One of the most asked questions besides, "Will there be tapas?" was, "Where are you from?". We thought we’d fill in some of the pieces of our story and path back to our home state of Michigan. Don’t worry, we’ll talk a bit about tapas in the next post.
Our journey isn’t too different from others we knew that made geographic moves or major life decisions during the pandemic. We fell into the “where’s our happy place” category. We’d lived in beautiful Colorado for more than twenty years and had never discussed having a place back in Michigan. The truth is past trips back to visit family were always a bit of a workout. Moving from one relatives home to another and trying our best to have time with parents, siblings, friends, and hitting the places on the nostalgic must stop list.
During the summer of 2020, we visited with family outside over long picnic lunches and barbeques. BUT, since we weren’t staying at relatives’ homes, we found ourselves heading to Petoskey and reintroducing ourselves and introducing two of our three kids to the area. It only took a few days, and it was LOVE! Like, head over heals stuff. Fortunately, Greg strayed off probation with me (no open house stops) and we scheduled to see a property that I had stalked online days prior. The next thing we knew, we’re back in Denver enthusiastically planning the fall remote school and work set up in Northern Michigan. It was one of the silver linings from 2020.
I remember taking this photo on an epic flight the following spring and how right it felt deciding to return to our home state, even if only for a few months of the year. Camille (our youngest kiddo) and I enjoyed this magical sunset for the last hour of the flight as we tried to identify lakes below and pinpoint the location of our property and favorite beaches.
We are forever grateful our kids have also fallen in love with being “Up North”.