Midwest Guest

Where I live: Catching Fireflies asks you to create something special for seniors

The long winter days may seem a bit dreary, but April McCrumb and the crew at Catching Fireflies invite creative types to help them spread a little love and sunshine among area seniors with a fun and thoughtful Valentine's Day project.

Do you want to be part of the fun?

April invites area residents of all ages to create colorful cards to donate for distribution to St. Anne's Mead Senior Center in Southfield and Sunrise Senior Living in Rochester. Just pull out some paper, glitter, glue, ribbons, crayons, lace, or whatever else strikes your fancy to create some cheerful cards and bring them to Catching Fireflies in Berkley or Rochester by February 11.

Catching Fireflies specializes in unique gifts, the work of independent artists, and promoting eco values like creative reuse and recycling (the colorful decor in the Berkley store especially showcases April's inventive use of found and recycled objects).

April already collected over 100 valentines by the time I heard from her late last week.

"People are using markers, glitter, stamps, rhinestones, beads and crayons to decorate," she said. "There is a pretty good mix of all ages and talents. We have cards with glue and glitter lettering, cut-and-past hearts, coloring sheets, embellished doilies, and more progressive scrapbooking type cards.

"One of our consignment artists dropped off sweet vintage styled valentine hang-ups you could tack on a wall or window, and one used tiny letter beads to spell out 'love bug' on a piece of wire and applied a 3-D lady bug on the card, too."

Handmade cards may be increasingly a thing of the past for many people as we tend to rely more and more on things like e-mail, texting, and social media to communicate with others, but receiving a physical card or letter can mean so very much to some folks-especially seniors who live in assisted living homes.

"I know it can be a bit lonely in assisted living homes," said April, remembering how her grandparents spent the last years of their lives in such homes.

This is the first year for the valentine card collection and distribution, and the project fits nicely into April's community involvement efforts.

"One of our goals for 2010 is to add more community focused projects to our events."

Check out the Catching Fireflies blog to find out how you can help share the love and check out some of the cute and creative cards crafty folks have already donated to the project. (April thought the cards featuring dog photos were clever, and I agree that they're pretty cute!)

It doesn't matter how crafty or creative you think you may, or may not, be--I think April would tell you that it's the love in your heart that counts.

"Just have fun with it," she said. "Valentine's Day isn't just about couples. It's a good reminder to share a little love with everyone in your life."

Visit Catching Fireflies on the Web for more information or stop by Catching Fireflies in Berkley (3117 W. 12 Mile) or downtown Rochester (203 East University).

 

Note: "Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Midwest shop 'til you drop

I can't believe how quickly the holidays are approaching!

Here, just in time for some last minute shopping, are some suggestions for those special people on your gift list from some of my past stories about Midwest businesses.

 

• I love wind chimes, and The Wind Chime Shop is a must-see whenever I visit southern Ohio's Hocking Hills area. The selection of chimes is astounding, and I always end up with at least a few sets as gifts and for myself when I stop in the store. Check out the store's Web site, and look for my favorite Gentle Spirits chimes!

 

• Love cheese? Then you'll love Cheese Haven near Port Clinton, Ohio. We like stopping by on our way home from Cleveland, or when we drive on out to the Marblehead lighthouse and picking up some of the store's cheddar cheese spread (check out No. 6 on Cheese Shop list at the Web site).





 

• I'm ready to place my order for cherry goodies from Cherry Republic! The company in Glen Arbor, Michigan, offers dried cherries, cherry jellies and jams, cherry salsa, cherry barbecue sauces, chocolate covered cherries, gummy cherry Sour Patch candies (my favorite), and almost any other product that incorporates one of Michigan's signature crops.

 

• Zingerman's family of businesses is another Michigan foodie delight-a family of companies dedicated to sharing the best in regional fare and fun food finds at their Ann Arbor deli, Roadhouse restaurant, through local outlets like Detroit's Eastern Market, and their mail order catalog. Our favorites include pimento cheese and their dense, rich coffeecakes (the coffeecakes freeze well if you can't eat them all at once).

 

• You can order a canoe from the Piragis Boundary Waters Catalog (we did), but you can also order a lot of other gifts from this Ely, Minnesota, outfitter. You can find plenty of outdoor gear, as well as gifts like jewelry, posters, photographic prints, and other hand-crafted items from northwoods artisans.

 

• For some curious reason, my story about our visit to Sechler's Factory Pickle Store in Fremont, Indiana, is one of my most popular posts. We occasionally find Sechler's Pickles in grocery stores in the Detroit area, but you can view a bigger variety of pickled products and gift packs at the Sechler's Web site. You'll have to call or fax in your order, but you can pick up a free pickle recipe book in PDF format before you log off to place your order.





 

• Looking for a funny gift and can't make it all the way up to Ishpeming, Michigan? Check out Da Yoopers' online store for beer...um...accessories, Upper Peninsula souvenirs, John Wayne lunchboxes, Elvis shopping bags, and the full catalog of Da Yoopers music and DVDs. Check the Rock Knockers section of the site to shop for the rock hound on your list.

 

• Visiting Bronner's near Frankenmuth, Michigan, is definitely worth the experience, but if you're short on time and still need that one special ornament for your tree or as a gift, you can always check out the huge Christmas store's online catalog.

 

There are a few of our favorite places for gifts from the Midwest. Do you know of others I should check out?

Shopping for a live Christmas tree at Michigan's Blake Farms

Shopping for a live Christmas tree always brings back childhood memories of going from tree lot to tree lot with my parents, the scent of fresh greenery, and carefully considering several candidates before finding just the right tree to grace our living room during the holiday season.

I've carried on the tradition of having a fresh-cut Christmas tree in my own home for the holiday, and in recent years, we've made the trek out to Blake Farms in Armada, Michigan, to purchase our tree.

Blake's may be better known as a cider mill to many living in the area, but I found out that they also sold Christmas locally harvested trees when I was searching for a Michigan tree a couple of years ago. We went out to the farm, selected our tree, got a free cup of hot cider as we made our purchase, and loaded the tree onto the top of our car for the ride home.

A new tradition was born that year!

Blake Farms is a family owned and operated orchard and cider mill established in 1946. The operation grew over the years and includes over 500 acres of orchard and farmland with crops like apples, peaches, pumpkins, and Christmas trees. Blake's was one of Michigan's first "pick your own" orchards in Michigan, so offering visitors a change to cut their own Christmas trees was a natural outgrowth of that operation.

The Christmas tree and greenery season starts at Blake's the weekend before U.S. Thanksgiving, when visitors can catch a wagon ride out to the Christmas tree fields to cut their own tree or check out the farm's lot with fresh pre-cut trees from the fields, wreaths, garlands, and other greenery.

We eagerly looked forward to the drive out to Blake's this year. We wandered the lot, drawn mostly to the several varieties of fir trees. We like fir trees because they seem to hold their needles longer, and their branches are usually strong enough to hold heavier ornaments.

We asked ourselves many questions about the various trees: Were they too tall? Were they too short? Were the tree trunks straight? Was there a branch on top of any of the trees that would hold my tree topper?

Halloween decorations still dotted part of the farm. A hay-bale face monitored our progress as a witch flew overhead on her broomstick!

We finally settled on a roly poly Douglas fir tree that ended up taking four strands of our LED lights to decorate, compared to last year's slimmer model that only carried two light strings.

A few minutes later, our tree was on its way to the shaker machine (to shake out loose needles). By the time I paid for the tree and collected our hot cider, the tree was bundled for the trip home and Tim was using his trucker hitch knots to fasten the tree to the top of his Mariner.

Living in Michigan makes it pretty easy to get a fresh-cut tree as the state is among the largest producers of Christmas trees in the nation.

Artificial trees may have their fans, but I like having a real Christmas tree. A trip to the tree farm is a great way to spend the day with your family, and I like that fact that tree farms provide jobs and income for local farmers with a recyclable and renewable crop.

Besides, it just doesn't seem like Christmas without a real tree to me!  

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Bronner's keeps the lights on for Santa in Frankenmuth, Michigan

If you're looking for Santa Claus, a good place to start would be a small Michigan town called Frankenmuth, where Bronner's Christmas store keeps the spirit of the holiday alive year round.

Visitors turn off of Frankenmuth's Main Street and travel a half-mile side road, driving past outsized Nativity figures, Santas, and snowmen--before finally arriving at 25 Christmas Lane, home to Bronner's and all things Christmas.

Bronner's is nirvana for Christmas enthusiasts, but be forewarned that if acres and acres of Christmas displays and an unabashed embrace of the holiday's Christian character isn't your cup of tea, a little bit of Bronner's may go a long way for you. Still, it's something you have to stop and see to at least say that you did so!

Billed as the "World's Largest Christmas Store", the building itself looks relatively low-key from the outside (sort of a mash-up between multiple pole barns and Alpine-style chalets), but Christmas lovers will delight in the treasures held inside.

Bronner's is big. Really big.

Just how big is it?

The 7.35-acre building is the size of 5-1/2 football fields and sits on 27 acres of land.

A parking lot that can accommodate over 1,000 cars and 50 buses at any given time means you don't have to worry about where to park your ride.

Bronner's draws over 2 million visitors each year to shop and gawk at over 50,000 trims and gifts, more than 350 decorated Christmas trees, and more than 700 animated figures. Many visitors come from Michigan and surrounding states, but most months find visitors coming from all 50 states, Canada, and from elsewhere around the world.

Shoppers snap up 1.3 million glass ornaments, 700,000 feet of garland, and 135,000 light sets each year. You can choose from over 500 different styles of Nativity scenes, Bibles in several languages, or 150 different styles of nutcrackers.

The store racks up something like $900 in electricity charges every day, much of which goes to power as many as 100,000 individual lights that decorate the store's interior.

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is, of course, the busiest time of the year at Bronner's. Santa holds court for as many as 12,000 children at the store during that time, and as many as 50,000 people may visit the store on the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Bronner's is one of the area's largest employers, with over 500 employees working at the store during the peak months of November and December. Consider the fact that the city of Frankenmuth has fewer than 5,000 residents, and that tourism drives the Bavarian-themed city's economy, then you understand just how important big Bronner's is to this small town.

Many visitors make a day, or even a weekend, out of visiting Bronner's, hitting one of Frankenmuth's all-you-can-eat chicken dinner restaurants, and shopping in the cute downtown stores or at the nearby outlet mall out on the I-75 expressway less than two hours' drive north of Detroit.

I've always lived within a couple hours' drive from Bronner's, and I grew up visiting the store at least every couple of years or so--and not just during the holidays. The store is open 361 days a year, closing only on New Year's Day, Easter, U.S. Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

I can remember several visits, when stepping into the winter fantasy land of Bronner's was the perfect antidote to a hot summer day.

I have many fond memories of Bronner's. I bought a number of my tree ornaments there, and a simple bronze-colored spire of a tree-topper I scored out of Bronner's sale bin years ago for $3, graces my tree every year.

The spirit behind Bronner's is founder Wally Bronner, a sign painter who parlayed his love of Christmas decorations and talent for creating displays into a Christmas themed business.

Bronner began painting signs as a high school student in 1943. He began his full-time business career with his 1945 high school graduation, establishing several different businesses before building the big Bronner's store on Christmas Lane in 1977.

Wally Bronner loved his career and remained with the company as the chairman of its board and chief ambassador of good cheer until his April 1, 2008 death at the age of 81. Bronner's wife Irene continues to carry on the tradition Wally loved so much, running the business with several of her children and their spouses, and keeping the lights on for Santa!

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankenmuth

New at the Urbane Life

Check out some of my latest articles at The Urbane Life:

Explore global diversity through film, music, dance and performance art in Dearborn-Visit the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, during  December for their three-day Arab Film Festival and a Latin-flavored music and dance installment of the museum's ongoing Global Thursdays series

Buy Local: Oakland Community College Potters Market creates showcase for local artists-Check out the work of over 130 local potters at this annual marketplace presented by students and alumni of OCC's well regarded Ceramic Technology program.

Motown memories tell a tale of empowerment and Detroit pride-Visit the Motown Museum (a.k.a. "Hitsville U.S.A.") as the label wraps up its fiftieth anniversary year.

Buy Local: The 3/50 project shows how to get the biggest bang for your buck-Invest in your community by supporting local businesses--where $68 of every $100 spent returns to your local community in the form of taxes, payroll and other spending.

The Urbane Life is a community blog for Urbane Apartments, a growing group of apartment buildings, luxury lofts and condos in metropolitan Detroit.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

New at The Urbane Life

Check out some of my latest articles at The Urbane Life:

Road Trip: Visit Toledo's heart of glass-Find out a little about this northern Ohio city's rich glassware and art glass history, check out the Libbey Glass Outlet store and schedule a stop at the Toledo Farmers Market.

Things to Do: Focus on upcoming DIA photo exhibitions-Preview several great photography shows coming to the Detroit Institute of Arts over coming months, including a special traveling exhibit of Avedon fashion photography from 1944-2000.

Buy Local: Shop fresh at Franklin Cider Mill-A trip to the cider mill for apples and fresh cider is a Michigan tradition, and Franklin Cider Mill has been "a family tradition since 1832" for metro Detroiters.

Lights! Camera! Action! See it all at the Detroit Film Theater this fall-Preview some great flicks coming to the Detroit Film Theater at the Detroit Institute of Arts this season, my favorite venue for movies.

The Urbane Life is a community blog for Urbane Apartments, a growing group of apartment buildings, luxury lofts and condos in metropolitan Detroit.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Picture not-so-perfect

When I said I took endless photographs during the Chicago Architecture Foundation Boat Cruise, I wasn’t kidding.

I was fortunate to take so many shots because, somewhere during the cruise, a huge fleck of dust somehow worked its way on to my camera sensor and into about a quarter of my photos. I discovered this sorry fact when we stopped at a coffee shop after the trip, and we were looking at our photos in our digital cameras’ preview windows.

I could crop out the dust fleck in some cases, which I think sometimes resulted in an improved final version over my original vision.

A few other cases meant marred shots beyond redemption with my meager Lightroom skills.

I was not happy.

Tim thought he’d seen a camera store in the neighborhood during his previous solo wanderings while I was at the TBEX convention, and we found someone who could give us directions to the camera store Tim remembered seeing.

Camera shopping these days seems more a matter of shopping at a large computer store, a large warehouse store or resorting to buying online because your local camera store closed long ago as film cameras became nearly non-existent.

The local camera store we shopped at when we bought our first SLRs (a Canon A-1 in my case, if you were curious), with its knowledgeable sales staff and long narrow store featuring floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with all sorts of cameras, gadgets and film, is long-gone.

But stepping into Central Camera Company in the shadow of the “El” on S. Wabash in downtown Chicago was a little like stepping into a time warp because it felt like one of those classic old, local camera shops.

We’d come to the right place.

A store clerk quickly checked my camera, located the offending piece of dust, pulled a bulb blower that looked a little like a rocket ship off of the shelf, puffed my problem piece of dust away, took a couple of test shots and handed my camera back to me.

He’d actually pulled an air blower from its package to do the job, without expecting us to pay for it. We ended up buying the $16 Giotto’s “rocket-air” blower because it worked much better than the lame rubber ear syringe we’d bought a couple of years ago from a drugstore for the same purpose, and Tim said he’d failed to find the Giotto’s blower around home when he’d looked for it before.

Besides, I figure a 110-year-old family business that treats customers right deserves a little support.

So, thanks and happy birthday to Chicago’s oldest camera store, Central Camera Company!

Thanks for Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Visit Da Yoopers, eh?

Living in Michigan’s largely wild and remote Upper Peninsula means that some of those especially hardy residents have plenty of time to spin some fascinating yarns and tale tales—and perhaps no group is more adept at jokingly spreading the frankly fantastic stories about hunting, beer and, um, bodily functions and mishaps than the myths, the legends, Da Yoopers!

Capitalizing on the mythology of the scruffy woodsmen happily drinking beer and expelling gas as they replay an endless loop of exaggerated tales from hunt and deer camp, the comedy show and musical group parlayed their success with skits and funny songs about life in the Upper Peninsula into more than a dozen albums and one roadside attraction that is a must stop for those visitors cruising through the UP and Ishpeming on Highway US 41.

Billed on Da Yoopers Tourist Trap site as “one of the seven wonders of Yooperland”, this stop offers all manner of exaggerated tourist tchotchkes, trinkets, knickknacks and whatever on display or, of course, for sale.

Want to get your picture taken with “Big Ernie”, which Da Yoopers site bills as the largest working rifle in the world? Check out “Big Gus”, reportedly the world’s largest running chain saw? Or explore the wonderful world of two-holer outhouses and deer camp?

It’s all here at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap!

While much of Da Yoopers’ comedy focuses on flatulence and beer, the Web site hastens to remind folks that the Tourist Trap is definitely a classy pit stop, complete with two (count ‘em), two flush toilets for travelers’ use.

Step into the main gift store at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap and find all sorts of strange and cheesy souvenirs. We did manage to find the Upper Peninsula waterfalls guidebook we’d forgotten at home at the store, so you can find something more than miniature cedar outhouses or outsized beer mugs if you look hard enough.

My favorite section of the Tourist Trap was the Rock Knockers Rock Shop, where I found some beautiful polished rocks and minerals that ended purchased for my own collection or as gifts.

If you just can’t make it to Da Yoopers Tourist Trap, there’s always the online store where Web shoppers can select unique gifts like a Yooper Wind Chime made with beer cans, Elvis collectibles or a 21^st Century Yoopers in Space double CD!

The site offers plenty more in the way of links to gleefully classless and goofy merch, jokes, doctored photos and more by way of illustrating Da Yoopers’ version of life in Da Yoop.

I looked hard for a flatulence-free video relatively free of goofy gross-out humor. This was the best I could do, but search for “Da Yoopers” on YouTube and you’ll find plenty of bawdy videos from the guys at their goofy and gross best, or worst if you will.   

© Dominique King

Indiana in a jar, Sechler’s Pickles factory store

We discover the most interesting things when we exit the freeway to take the slow way home from a trip.

We recently visited northeastern Indiana and decided to scout out a couple of other locations for future trips in the area just before crossing the state line to head home into Michigan.

Driving a road paralleling I-69, I spotted The Outlet Shoppes at Fremont. I’m not a big outlet shopper, but I wondered if the mall contained any athletic shoe outlets and drove into the parking lot of the mall’s south section. This section seemed fairly new and not fully occupied, so maybe it was easier to spot the pickle placard hanging in front of a space billed as The Pickle Factory.

Dill pickles, sweet pickles, bread and butter slices, gherkins, hot peppers—we love them all. Although it’s not like I hadn’t just returned from a trip to Tony Packo’s in Toledo Ohio, where I stocked up on Tim’s favorite Sweet Hots peppers and pickles mix and some bread and butter pickles for me, we still had to stop and check out Sechler’s pickle factory outlet store.

The store stocked plenty of pickles, condiments and other pickled products, but the real highlight of our visit was the pickle bar where we sampled a variety of tart dill and sweet pickles before making our selections.

You didn’t think we would be leaving the store without still more pickles to take home and crowd into the cabinet already full of Packos’ product, did you?

Sechler’s No Garlic Aged in Wood Genuine Dill Pickles tasted tart without being too vinegary like some dill pickles. A couple of jars of the Sechler’s Sweet Pickle chips joined those dill pickles in our basket, and we threw in a jar of Sechler’s dilled cauliflower as something new to try at our next picnic.

Sweet pickles are a Sechler specialty, and the store offered sweet pickles to suit a variety of tastes for sampling. I’m not a huge sweet pickle fan, but I liked several varieties of Sechler’s sweets because they lacked the cloying sweetness that you get with so many other sweet pickles.

Sechler’s traces its origins back to 1914, when founder Ralph Sechler ran a pickle station in the small town of St. Joe in extreme northeastern Indiana. Sechler worked for D.M. Sears, hauling fresh-picked cucumbers in salt brine by horse-drawn wagon to the train station for transport to Sears in Fort Wayne. Sechler stopped out of the pickle business for college and the Army before returning to work for Sears in 1919.

By 1921, Sechler leased pickle stations from Sears to begin building his own business. His wife Anna hand-packed jars of product for consumer sales in the Sechler home kitchen until 1930, when the Sechlers moved their business into a factory housed in a converted barn.

A third generation of the Sechlers still owns and operates the family pickle business in St. Joe, Indiana. The current 60,000-square-foot Sechler facility includes the old Sechler farmhouse which first housed the business and now serves as an office.

The Sechler family emphasizes using the best of new techniques to enhance, rather than replace their time-honored way of producing product. Family ownership, family recipes and fresh ingredients remain at the heart of the company’s success.

“We could make them faster, but that wouldn’t make them any better” remains the company’s tagline and philosophy of eschewing short cuts that might short-change customers by diminishing the quality of Sechler’s products.

The pickle plant offers tours from April through October. It was already too late in the day to drive over to make a tour when we discovered the store, but the tour is certainly on our list of things to do next time we visit the area.

Meanwhile, fun stuff on Sechler’s Web site includes a free downloadable recipe booklet in PDF format that features dishes like dilly pepperoni pizza, grilled cheese with dill pickle sandwiches and cranberry-orange pickle muffins—all using Sechler pickle or relish products.

And, for the curious, I did find my athletic shoe outlet store in the larger and more fully occupied north section of the Outlet Shoppes a block up the road.

Be sure to come back to Midwest Guest in coming weeks to read about our visits to Indiana’s Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum and Indiana author and naturalist Gene Stratton Porter’s historic home site.

© Dominique King 2009

Catalog canoe delivery from Minnesota

There are some things you like to try before you buy, but Tim found himself high and dry when he went shopping for a canoe last year.

We bought our first canoe, one of those heavy aluminum boats, after a friend saw it with a “for sale” sign at a curb in front a nearby house. We later sold that canoe by putting it in front of our house with a similar sign on it and waiting until a young couple came by and bought it.

I remember going to open paddle days with Tim as nearby outfitters converged on a local park where potential canoe and kayak customers could paddle the product around a lake or river before deciding which boat suited them best. We bought a small fiberglass solo canoe and a larger tandem canoe over the years after first trying out boats on the water at similar events or on a river at a local outfitter store close to home.

Local outfitters with a great selection of canoes and open paddles where customers can try a boat before they buy a boat are difficult, if not impossible, to find around the Detroit area these days. The local outfitter where we bought our fiberglass solo and tandem canoes closed long ago, and outfitters here now seem to carry mostly kayaks with no opportunity to take the boats for a test float.

So, when Tim decided he wanted another solo canoe, he turned to his Piragis catalog.

Piragis is an outfitter and catalog company based in Ely, a small town in northern Minnesota near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).

Now, we’re not entirely unfamiliar with Piragis and the BWCAW.

Our last visit to the area occurred during the infamous Fourth of July Blowdown in 1999, a widespread storm that fell 600 square miles of forest and caused $3 million in damage in Minnesota.

We’d just visited Piragis to pick up two canoes we’d rented for a week’s visit to the area. We strapped the boats to the top of our Mercury Mountaineer and began driving to the nearby Blue Heron Bed & Breakfast, when a furious rainstorm started and straight line winds threatened to blow our rented boats away into the wilderness.

We, and our rented boats, survived the drive and we had a great trip after the storm subsided and the power gradually came back on in the area.

We’ve purchased small things from Piragis’ catalog over the intervening years, so Tim felt confident about the Minnesota company when calling their canoe experts to purchase this latest boat.

Steve at Piragis suggested a Wenonah Wilderness in Kevlar Flex lay-up to Tim, saying that it met his desire for a lightweight and stable boat to handle the paddling Tim likely wanted to do on lakes and quiet rivers in our area.

Tim selected the color and features he wanted on his Wenonah and prepared to take delivery on his custom-built boat.

Waiting for a truck from Fed Ex or UPS, or the local mail carrier, to show up at the door with Tim’s canoe wasn’t what Piragis had in mind, though.

Piragis employs a somewhat unique delivery system for canoes going outside of their local area. As Tim’s boat became ready for shipment, the folks at Piragis posted a notice on a board at the store where customers headed home from their own BWCAW trip could sign up to deliver canoes to customers who could not make the trip to pick up their new canoes.

Steve told Tim the company experienced better results with fewer canoes damaged in transit by offering customers the opportunity to make a little money by relaying boats to their ultimate delivery destination.

It might seem a bit fitting that it began raining as we drove a couple of hours out to Ionia, Michigan to pick up Tim’s new canoe from the fellow who ferried it down from Ely. Fortunately, we didn’t have to contend with the high winds that we experienced the first time we picked up canoes from Piragis.

Steve’s advice on buying the Wenonah was spot-on for Tim, with the boat being fun to paddle and easy to handle because of its light weight.

The Wenonah is also easy to handle when it comes to storage. I have what most folks might call a 1-1/2 car garage, but now it’s really a 3-canoe garage with barely enough room for one of the cars and our bicycles!

© Dominique King