I make a huge deal about New Year's Eve, and my goal is to spend each one in a different place. It got really difficult traveling over the holidays in the last few years, and I don't like leaving my kids during Christmas break, so now we're going to different places closer to home. This year, I searched for ball drops in Michigan, and came up with Traverse City! Home of the Cherry Festival, they have a cherry drop. Sounded like fun to me! My brother and his family, plus other friends wanted to get together for NYE too.
Airbnb
Airbnbs on Lake Michigan in the winter are very reasonable, because they're beach towns and people would rather be there in the summer! I love Lake Michigan any time. We got a house for two families across the street from Lake Michigan, close to Pathfinder School. We could walk across the street and 1/4 mile down the road to the beach, and easily drive to Traverse City. It was a busy road, but good location.
Restaurants
We went to 7 Monks Taproom to watch the MSU basketball game, and it was great. Busy but not too busy, wonderful food. We tried to watch the Lions game that night at a few different places, but they were packed, so we ended up at North Peak Brewing Company, which we also liked. (Bonus - we could get in there!) On New Year's Eve morning, Kris contacted a couple of restaurants and asked if we could have a reservation for 22 people. Amazingly, West End Tavern, which is right on the water, and about a mile from our Airbnb...said YES! It wasn't even a crazy expensive place, and we had our own room! That was wonderful. It turned out Kate had friends in common with our server, and he even remembered going to her parents' house...anyway, it was a nice place, and I'm glad they had room for us.
Things to Do
We hiked one of my favorite Michigan hikes - Empire Bluffs Trail. It's just a little 1.5 mile walk, and it has a huge payoff. You're high above the water, you're on a cliff, and you can see the shoreline which reminds me of Hawaii. Our family and the Uptons went, and the boys entertained us by doing backflips, front flips, and box jumps. They always make hikes even more exciting! I've been on this hike twice, and I asked the boys if they remembered it, and they didn't. I looked it up and I took them 10 years ago, when the twins were 6 and Max was 3. Of course they didn't remember it! We've been on a million hikes since then.
Downtown Traverse City - We walked around the downtown and visited Wilson's Antique Downtown, which is a four-story antique store! I'm not even really into antiques, and I still loved it. We walked around to other shops around there, and then down to the beach and out on the pier. A lovely walk and town.
Cherry Drop - This was one of my favorite moments of the weekend. It had just started to snow an hour or two earlier, so there were beautiful snowflakes drifting down. We parked along the street a few blocks away and all located each other in front of the stage. The lit up cherry was high above the street. There was a DJ playing music, and everyone danced and slid around in the snow. There was no food, no drink, just dancing, singing, and waiting until midnight. People on the second story along the street, all dressed up at parties in sequined dresses waved at us. It was the same atmosphere as before a race - everyone in a good mood and having fun! We counted down the cherry as it dropped and celebrated at midnight.
Lake Michigan - Since Lake Michigan was right across the road, I went to it in the morning, afternoon, and night! The colors were so great, as usual. Then, on New Year's Day morning, as is our tradition, we did a polar plunge. For this one, we drove to Gage's hotel - Sugar Beach Resort Hotel, because it had a hot tub! Right from his room, we ran down to the lake across the sand, plunged in, and then scampered off to the hot tub. It's such a fun way to kick off the year! This year wasn't even that cold - some years it's been windy and frigid.
Where will we kick of 2025? We have time to plan!
