"Remembrance of things past."William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

Now that Teddy and I have finished our farmhouse remodeling projects for the summer we are taking some time to relax and enjoy ourselves before heading back west for the winter.
With that in mind we took a day trip downstate to visit some of our old growing-up stomping grounds. We traveled south from Leelanau county on Hwy M22 which skirts the eastern shore of Lake Michigan from Northport in the Leelanau peninsula to Manistee in Manistee county. Our first stop was in the village of Frankfort where Teddy lived in this house until moving here to the farm in the 10th grade. Teddy enjoyed driving around the town pointing out friends homes and various POIs.
From there we continued down M22 passing through Elberta, Arcadia and Onekama in succession.

Just south of Elberta Teddy snapped this pict of her Grandmother Gilbert's house, now abandoned and in disrepair. I can remember having dinner there when Teddy & I were first married; it is amazing how quickly mother nature takes back what's hers if there is no human intervention.

Onekama, on Portage Lake, is where my parents lived while I was in the 7th and 8th grade. I pointed out to Teddy the hills where my brothers & I sledded in winter and where I swam and fished in Portage Lake. My father worked for the USDAs Soil Conservation Service. his office was in Manistee some 15 or so miles south of Onekama. When I started the 9th we moved to Manistee so he could be closer to his office and we lived is a succession of rental homes there.




This is where we lived when I graduated from HS in 1956. Surprisingly, some fifty odd years later, the house looks pretty much the same now as then.

I joined the Air Force soon after graduating HS and shortly afterward my parents purchased this house three miles south of Manistee. I'm pretty sure that they weren't trying to hide from me as they did give me their new address. ;-)
It was an old farmhouse and through the years my father transformed it to a beautiful country home. It lay pretty far from the road so he built a connecting road dead-ending just past the house and donated it to the county with the provision that they pave it and build a circular turnaround at the end.



That road ended up being named, ...TA DAH...
"PAGE ROAD"







We returned home via US31 stopping in Beulah, MI for an ice-cream. It was a perfect day filled with pleasant memories.