Midwest Guest

The Kottage on the Korner in Suttons Bay, Michigan

We've visited the Traverse City area in northern Michigan many times over the years, staying in cottages, at large resorts and at little local motels.

This time, we opted to try one of our favorite styles of stays by booking nearly a week at a cute little bed-and-breakfast inn called the Korner Kottage in downtown Suttons Bay, which is a quick 20-minute ride north of Traverse City.

The 1920s Craftsman-style house sits, most appropriately, on a corner. It fronts M-22, one of my all-time favorite scenic drives, just outside of the wonderfully walkable downtown of the Village of Suttons Bay and a short block walk down to a nice municipal beach and marina along Lake Michigan.

We'd driven through Suttons Bay many times and spotted the house on the corner, but meeting innkeeper Linda Munro on Facebook and Twitter was part of the reason we ultimately booked our stay here last month.

The Korner Kottage is a romantic retreat for couples, which seems appropriate given the home's history started with the story of enduring love between an early 1900s lumberman and his sweetheart.

Martin Severson owned a sawmill and forested property in the area. He fell in love with Olise Olson and, in 1921, he began building a home in anticipation of the couple's future life together.

Olson accepted her beau's proposal in 1922, but there was a problem.

Her parents did not approve of the match.

But true love endures.

Time passed. The young couple became 40-year-olds. Olson's parents passed away, and the couple finally felt free to marry and live in the house that Severson built in Suttons Bay.

The house became the Korner Kottage B&B in 1980.

We stayed in the Paris room, a beautiful second-floor room overlooking the village and decorated with Parisian art and souvenirs that made you feel as if you were at an inn in the City of Lights itself.

Innkeepers Linda and Jim foster the feeling of romance and pamper their guests with amenities like 700-thread-count sheets, cozy bathrobes, lemon chocolate chip cookies in the afternoon and a full breakfast each morning.

We loved Jim's breakfasts, which stressed the use of locally grown and produced ingredients. One day, we had peach jam made by a local woman with locally baked bread. Other days we had breakfast entrees like stuffed French toast, an egg strata featuring local veggies and, always, fresh fruit and Linda's house-made Korner Kottage Krunch granola.

I also appreciated more practical amenities like free and easily accessible WiFi and a small fridge tucked into our closet that meant I could keep a ready supply of the ice tea on hand.

I always love B&Bs that have a house dog. One of my few regrets is that we didn't see much of the inn's Nestle Quik, a sweet and well-behaved dog, during our stay.

You can enjoy the Korner Kottage a home base and great place to relax after exploring the wineries, hiking trails, lakes, lighthouses and the northwestern Michigan foodie scene. Relax in your room, read in the parlor or sit a spell on the enclosed front porch to enjoy a glimpse of village life.

Be sure to check out the art at the Korner Kottage. We particularly enjoyed the quirky sheet-metal figures depicting various musicians by artist Alec Greaves scattered around the house and garden.

I've got to admit that the proofreader in me isn't wild about the Korner Kottage moniker, although I've occasionally threatened to dub the corner where I live as "King's Korner", but name aside, it's a great bed-and-breakfast with a personable style that stays away from being overly frilly as some period-style inns.

We stayed at the Korner Kottage during the week at the end of September, which I think may be one of the best times of the year to enjoy the place as a quiet retreat or spur-of-the-moment destination. The area is very popular during the summer, so you'll need to plan and reserve well in advance if you want to enjoy stay there during the hustle and bustle of the high tourist season.

If you want to take a little piece of the Korner Kottage experience home, you can always purchase some of Linda's granola at the B&B, in selected retail outlets around town, or via the Korner Kottage Web site. The rolled-oat, almond, pecan, pistachio, sunflower seed, flax seed, hemp seed, raisin, dried cherry and maple syrup mix is among the best granolas we've ever tasted, and it was nice to take this sweet reminder of our stay home with us.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Suttons Bay on Dwellable

Visit the Inn at Honey Run in Ohio's Amish Country

We enjoyed a serene getaway amid beautiful flowers and birds this past spring at the Inn at Honey Run, and I suspect this country inn tucked into the heart of Ohio's Amish Country would prove equally beautiful and relaxing at any other time of the year.

This bed and breakfast inn sits on 70 acres laced by walking trails, meadows and farmland in central Ohio's Holmes County, home to the world's largest Amish community.

The Amish communities of Millersburg and Berlin are close by, and we found the inn a perfect base from which to tour area cheese and country markets.

The Inn at Honey Run has about 40 guest rooms, suites or cottages. Many of the main lodge's two-dozen rooms have window walls or decks, but we opted to stay in one of the rooms in the Honeycombs, a unique building set into the earth overlooking meadow and farmland.

A soothing instrumental CD was playing as we first entered our room, and we spent time during our four-day stay bird watching and relaxing on our patio.

Bird watchers have identified over 100 species of birds visiting the habitat, bird feeders and bird houses that dot the grounds at Honey Run.

Spring is also a great time for checking out some of the 1,200 plant species folks have identified along the inn's nature trails. We were there just as the trilliums were in bloom, making for some nice photo opportunities.

Most of the nature trails at Honey Run are short, but a few of them can be a bit steep. Taking the trail up to the Honeycombs from the dining room was a bit of a workout after a full meal!

We ate breakfast at the inn every day during our stay and enjoyed dinner out on the deck one evening. Eating in the deck's treetop setting was a special pleasure as it was a bit cool and we had the deck to ourselves--kind of like having our own private dining room.

Tim enjoys dining on the deck

The restaurant recently announced the results of an ongoing renovation and rebranding under the guidance of Executive Chef Scott Fetty.

Fetty arrived at the inn in January 2010 after more than a decade as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute in Pittsburgh. He developed a new menu and new identity for the inn's restaurant, announcing the new name, Tarragon, earlier this autumn.

Tarragon grows naturally in the region, and the name evokes the nature and natural colors surrounding the inn.

The food was great during our visit, but I'd love to go back and check it out again when we could sample meats, fish or cheese from the inn's onsite smokehouse.

The inn is within two hours of Cleveland and Columbus, but it is miles away from the big city in location and in spirit.

Established in 1982, it is one of a handful of Ohio inns on the Select Registry of luxury B&Bs. There are about 400 inns on the registry, which conducts regular inspections of each property. We received a guidebook listing all of the Select Registry inns when we checked out at the Inn at Honey Run.

The Inn at Honey Run is nice for a romantic getaway, special occasion or small conference. Children over the age of 12 can stay in the main lodge, but rooms at the Honeycombs are adults-only.

Wi-Fi is available in the main lodge, but connectivity is pretty much nonexistent in the Honeycombs. That was all right by me, as I had no problem scooting down to the main lobby for quick online check-ins and spending my time out at the Honeycombs with the birds and the stars in the night skies.

Don't expect a hot club scene or neon-lit nightlife in the area, but do expect a great atmosphere to relax and enjoy all that nature has to offer at Honey Run.

Check out the latest news on the Inn at Honey Run's site, which features links to its newsletter and blogs from the inn's chef and horticulturalist. You can also connect with the inn on Facebook or Twitter.

Want to know more about our trip to Holmes County? Read Amish cheese and more in Holmes County, Ohio and Driving in Amish Country.

Learn more about the Amish and Mennonite communities in Holmes County with Holmespun: An Intimate Portrait of an Amish and Mennonite Community by Laura Hurwitz.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts anchors vibrant West Michigan art scene

The Bronson Park district in downtown Kalamazoo is home to some of this western Michigan city's most historic sites, a vibrant art scene, and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

We enjoyed an eclectic juxtaposition of vintage and contemporary during our recent stay at The Kalamazoo House, a bed-and-breakfast in an 1878-vintage home, literally a few steps away from the Modern-style museum.

We visited the museum on a quiet week day after several special exhibitions closed, and with incoming special exhibitions not yet in place, so several galleries were not open. Still, we found plenty to enjoy with the museum's permanent exhibits and exploring the building.

In 1924, art activists established the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA) to offer classes and to establish and maintain a museum. Their mission of encouraging the creation and appreciation of art remains the museum's key focus.

The KIA began operating in an old home on loan to them. The organization finally got a full-time director and began offering classes in 1931, and the museum moved into its first permanent home in an old Victorian mansion in 1947.

In 1961, the KIA built a modern glass-and-slab style building next to the gracious old mansion that is now the bed-and-breakfast inn. The architectural firm of Skidmore, Owning, and Merrill based the new museum's design on the ideas of German architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe.

The building exemplified the International architecture style, which first emerged in the 1920s and 1930s as one of the first styles to include Modern elements like glass walls, slab-like construction, and exposed columns like those pioneered by Mies Van Der Rohe.

The spacious new building allowed museum officials to begin actively increasing the collection.

The KIA currently has about 4,000 pieces in its permanent collection, emphasizing modern American painting, as well as American and European prints and drawings, photography, sculpture and contemporary ceramics.

Some of my favorite pieces I saw during our visit included American paintings like Glenn O. Coleman's "Brooklyn Bridge", John Stockton De Martelly's "Looking at the Sunshine", and Andy Warhol's portrait of President Gerald R. Ford.

The piece in the collection most people may remember when they think of the museum is the "Kalamazoo Ruby Light Chandelier" by glass artist Dale Chihuly. Chihuly's 1998 showy creation of 400 pieces of red, orange, and yellow glass and wire greets visitors as they walk into the museum's two-story South Park Street entrance.  Guests staying in some rooms at The Kalamazoo House have a particularly spectacular view of the piece at night, although I got my best night-time photo of Chihuly's chandelier by shooting up through the glass wall of the museum's entrance one evening.

The Chihuly came to the museum after its last major renovation in 1994. The architectural firm of Ann Beha Associates designed an expansion to preserve the museum's sleek International-style features while adding 30,000 square feet to the existing building. The building is now 72,000 square feet and includes the two-story lobby, open public spaces, a technologically modern auditorium, an interactive gallery for kids, as well as ten galleries, classrooms, an art library, a gallery shop with work from many local artists, administrative offices and workrooms.

An estimated 100,000 museum visitors view the permanent collections and 10 to 15 changing exhibitions each year.

The KIA established the Kalamazoo Art Fair in 1951 as a showcase for local artists to exhibit and sell their work. The Kalamazoo Art Fair, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this summer, draws more than 60,000 visitors each year and takes place during early June in nearby Bronson Park.

The Kirk Newman Art School at the KIA holds more than 300 classes for more than 3,000 students of all ages each year. The museum named the school in 2006 for a local sculptor whose significant pieces include the "People" sculpture in front of the museum, a grouping of sculptures of children in  Bronson Park, and the "On the Move" bronze silhouettes of commuters I've seen many times at Detroit's Michigan Avenue People Mover station.

I hope visit the KIA again, maybe making a weekend of it by staying at The Kalamazoo House, catching an Art Hop (an informal monthly event featuring multiple art exhibits around town), visiting the city's numerous galleries, checking out the current exhibits at the KIA, and further exploring the wonderfully walkable downtown Kalamazoo.

Read more about our visit to the city at The Kalamazoo House: An urban B&B in southwest Michigan.

Be sure to check out Kalamazoo Michigan by David Kohrman, an Arcadia Press book with lots of vintage photos of the city, or get your own reproduction of a vintage poster from Works Projects Administration (WPA) for the KIA's 1936 membership drive.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Kalamazoo

Visit Michigan's remote Whitefish Point Lighthouse

Michigan's Whitefish Point Lighthouse sits at the eastern end of Lake Superior along a stretch of shoreline known as the "Shipwreck Coast", or even more chillingly, the "Graveyard of Ships".

The area about 10 miles north of the Upper Peninsula town of Paradise looks serene on a sunny summer day, but November brings strong winds with waves that can reach as high as 35 feet. There are few natural harbors between Whitefish Point and Grand Marias, about 80 miles west, and about 200 of 550 known Lake Superior shipwrecks over the years happened in this area.

In 1816, the Invincible, a 60-foot trading vessel, earned the dubious distinction of being the first ship known to sink here.

However, Lake Superior is still a major turning point for shipping traffic from Minnesota, Canada and Michigan's western Upper Peninsula headed 40 miles southeast to St. Mary's River and the Sault Ste. Marie Locks, then on to Lake Huron and other points south.

In 1847, Congress appropriated $5,000 to construct Whitefish Point light station on a 115.5-acre site with sand dunes and a cranberry bog.

Workers built a 65-foot-tall stone light tower and detached 1-1/2 story light keeper home made from stone shipped from nearby Tahquamenon Island. The location's remoteness added to the expense, for a final cost of $8,298.

The light at Whitefish Point began operating in 1849, just ahead Copper Harbor Lighthouse on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, making it them the two oldest light stations on Lake Superior.

The 1855 opening of the Soo Locks resulted in heavier shipping traffic in the area, and deterioration of the stone light tower at Whitefish Point caused by severe weather, led to calls improvements. A Fresnel lens replaced the tower's original lamps and reflectors in 1857. Construction began on a new light station in 1861.

The new 80-foot-tall tower was a six-foot-diameter cylinder with 1/4-inch cast-iron sheathing and wood paneling on the interior to reduce condensation. The tower stopped 17 feet above the ground at a covered passageway connecting it to a new 2-story light keepers' house.

Workers assembled pre-fab cast iron sections into a square pyramidal skeletal framework intended to reduce stress on the tower during high winds.

In 1895, renovation of the keepers' home created more room for added staff and their families. Staff also painted the light tower and its framework white (from its original dark brown) for higher daytime visibility.

In 1923, the U.S. Coast Guard built a rescue station at Whitefish Point and continued to staff the light station until its automation in 1971.

In 1973, Whitefish Point Light Station earned listing on the National Register of Historic Places and a state historical marker in 1974.

Fans of maritime lore may best know Whitefish Point for its connection to the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. Electrical outages during the severe storms that night caused the Whitefish Point light to go out as the Fitzgerald attempted to make it to safety there.

In 1978, a group of divers, teachers, and educators with an interest in eastern Lake Superior shipwrecks established the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS).

Whitefish Township approached the GLSHS for help to preserve the light station. The Society received permission from the Coast Guard for a museum at the site and opened the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in 1986. Congress officially transferred ownership of the Whitefish Point site to the GLSHS in 1996.

The museum and the lighthouse open from May through October, drawing 60,000 visitors in 2009. The Edmund Fitzgerald's bell and memorial to its crew is a major attraction. Visitors can also walk the passageway between the house and the light tower to peer up the narrow stairway, but concerns about high-voltage electricity means they cannot climb to the top of the tower.

The area is a major migratory flyway, and the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory is on the property. A rare pair of Piping Plovers nesting at Whitefish Point in 2009 had three offspring, making them the first hatched there in two decades.

A barrier-free boardwalk to the shoreline, erected in 1998, helps protect the fragile dunes and beach grass. A stairway at the end of the boardwalk allows visitors to walk out on the beach to walk or hunt agates.

Visitors can also stay overnight in one of five guest rooms in the restored vintage-1923 Coast Guard barracks building from April through mid-November.

Be sure to check out my stories Keweenaw history comes alive at Copper Harbor Lighthouse and Remembering the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Want to learn more about Lake Superior shipwrecks and lighthouses? Check out Shipwrecks of Lake Superior by James R. Marshall or Western Great Lakes Lighthouses by Ray Jones and Bruce Roberts.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Paradise

The Kalamazoo House: An urban B&B; in southwest Michigan

I wrote to a friend in Kalamazoo, Michigan, asking for bed-and-breakfast recommendations when we recently decided to drive across the state for a spur-of-the-moment visit.

We booked a couple of nights at The Kalamazoo House based on her advice and had a wonderful stay at this urban oasis within easy walking distance of a downtown pedestrian mall, dozens of restaurants and stores, art galleries, historic sites, and Bronson Park. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is literally steps away from the inn, and guests staying in a couple of the inn's rooms have a spectacular nighttime view of the lighted piece by renown glass artist Dale Chihuly suspended in the museum's lobby.

You should instantly feel at home when you walk into a great B&B;, and we instantly felt like cherished friends as innkeeper Laurel Parrott greeted us, showed us to our room, and invited us down to the front porch for the inn's daily social hour.

Elegant antique furnishings and a jewel-tone color palette give the rooms a dignified look without the excessive ruffles and cluttered feeling of some Victorian-era B&Bs.; Fully modern features like individual air-conditioning and heating controls in each room and wireless access throughout the house give guests the best of both worlds-vintage and modern.

Plus, starting each day off with a full, cooked-to-order breakfast and ending each evening with a fresh-baked chocolate cookie for a bedtime snack made our stay feel especially homey.

We wandered downstairs after settling into our room to check out the inn's collection of local menus and join Laurel and her husband Terry, along with other inn guests, on the front porch for drinks, snacks, and conversation.

The building in the background is the art museum-it is that close!

Laurel and Terry asked about our preferences, making dinner suggestions, telling us about the house, the town, and things to do in town. We spent a pleasant hour with everyone before setting out on our own to eat dinner, take some photos, and do a little window shopping downtown.

Both of us are history buffs, so we found the history of the house fascinating. Businessman and cigar maker David Lilienfeld built the Queen Anne/Eastlake-style house 1878. The building, like several others in this historic section of the city, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lilienfeld came to American from Germany in 1860, first working as a clerk at the M. Israel and Company dry goods store.

Israel settled in Kalamazoo in 1843 after falling ill there while working as a traveling salesman. Israel was so impressed with Kalamazoo and opportunities he saw there, that when he returned to Germany to marry, he brought his bride Tilly back to Kalamazoo and persuaded many other young Germans to follow him to southwestern Michigan to seek their own fortunes.

David Lilienfeld and his brother, William, started a cigar store a few years after arriving in America. William moved to Chicago, but David stayed on in Kalamazoo, expanding his shop and becoming a cigar manufacturer.

By the late 1880s, Kalamazoo was one of the country's leading producers of cigars, with nearly 40 firms producing about 150,000 cigars per day. The Lilienfeld Company produced about 2,000,000 cigars per year at this time with 25 employees.

Cigar making in Kalamazoo largely came to an end in 1908 in the wake of worker strikes, and Lilienfeld moved his company to Detroit.

It's easy to imagine the Lilienfelds and their business associates meeting in David's large parlor with its wooden bar and high ceilings. Today the cigar smokers are long gone, but the parlor retains its original opulence.

The parlor is one of the spacious common rooms on The Kalamazoo House's main floor. We found it a nice place to relax and read or watch a bit of television at the end of the day, but the main floor common area is also large enough to book for parties, business meetings or small weddings.

For us, The Kalamazoo House is the perfect place for a relaxing and romantic getaway. We're hoping to return very soon!

I also reviewed this property on Yelp.

Want to learn a bit more about Kalamazoo and its history? Check out Kalamazoo Michigan by David Kohrman, an Arcadia Press book with lots of vintage photos of the city, or Kalamazoo: The Place Behind the Products, an Illustrated History by Peter J. Schmitt, which covers the many of the businesses and people important to Kalamazoo's development (including the Lilienfeld family and Kalamazoo cigar makers).

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Hotel Review
Kalamazoo

Romantic Vacation
Kalamazoo

Midwest travel links for October 2009

Check out some of these Midwest-related blog posts from other writers I've enjoyed reading this past month:

• Ode Lo Toledo-Author Brian Fies writes about visiting the Toledo Museum of Art for the opening of the LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel exhibition, which features pages of original art from his book, Mom's Cancer.

• 40 Things to do in Detroit before you're dead-Becks celebrates her 40th birthday with this list of must-sees in the "D"  

 

 

• Where's Tyler?-Forget about finding Waldo and check out Tyler's travels in western Michigan.

• Adventures in apple picking-Follow Farsighted Fly Girl into a northern Indiana apple orchard for the quintessential autumn experience of picking apples in the Midwest.

• 3-Way-That's chili, people! I'm not a fan of chili with beans, and I usually can't get it without beans in restaurants in the Detroit area. I acquired a taste for Skyline Chili when visiting southern Ohio and always try to keep a few cans of it in my cupboards at home, so I can appreciate this story about this Cinci specialty.

• Ohio's best inns and B&Bs-I love small bed & breakfasts and country inns. I've stayed at a couple of places on this list (Inn at Cedar Falls and Inn at Brandywine Falls), but it looks like there are plenty of other great places I'd love to stay at on future trips to Ohio.

• Museums of northwest Indiana-We've visited the fab Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum several times, but this list has several other great-sounding small museums in the same region. Northern Indiana has museums dedicated to art, autos, outlaws and more!

 

 

• Milton House Museum in Milton, Wisconsin-Learn about this stop on the Underground Railroad as Linda and her family travel through an underground tunnel leading to a cabin used as a secret hiding place for slaves on their way north to freedom.

• Must-see museums: The Louvre in Minneapolis-Angela at The Gypsy's Guide previews what looks to be a great exhibit, The Louvre and the Masterpiece, playing at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this fall and winter.

• Books with North Dakota and Norwegian roots-Minot, North Dakota, hosts the annual Norsk Hostfest, North America's largest Scandinavian festival. Annika checks out the Scandinavian Heritage Bookstore at this year's festival, makes some recommendations for readers, and shows off her traditional Norwegian costume.  

• Somewhere in Time, a cult classic filmed in Michigan-Well before the recent flurry of filming movies in Michigan, fueled by state incentives, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour starred in this romantic late 1970s movie filmed in large part on Michigan's Mackinac Island. Check out Part 2 of this story here.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

What is the perfect bed & breakfast experience?

Bluebell cottage at the Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls

The perfect Bed and Breakfast experience happens when I feel perfectly at home the moment I approach an inn. Homey touches like fresh cookies in the common room, or a comfortable chair next to a reading lamp are nice, but to me, it's even more important being greeted like an cherished friend when entering the front door and having innkeepers sincerely interested in helping you make the most of your time at their inn--whether you feel like a constant round of activity or simply feel like relaxing and letting the stress and annoyances of your everyday life fade away. The perfect Bed and Breakfast experience means I'll feel even more at home than I do when I'm in my own home, because I'll have all the warmth, comfort, and conveniences of home without having to worry about doing the dishes or laundry!

Check out some of my B&B; experiences:

Déjà vu at Cedar Falls

Daniel Rust House is a gem

Welcome to Historic Jacob Hill Inn

Mischievous spirit at Pilgrim House Inn

Warm Western hospitality at French Creek Ranch Bed & Breakfast

Cozy B&B; and spectacular waterfalls draw visitors to Ohio’s Brandywine Falls

This post is an entry for a bed & breakfast getaway sponsored by The Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Cozy B&B; and spectacular waterfalls draw visitors to Ohio’s Brandywine Falls

I love waterfalls, and I love small Bed & Breakfast inns, so staying at the Inn at Brandywine Falls turned out to be the perfect way for us to spend a long Easter weekend.

 

 

The spectacular 60-plus-foot bridal-veil Brandywine Falls is just few steps from the inn, a historic 1848-vintage home with six guest rooms that innkeepers George and Katie Hoy lovingly decorated with period furnishings and antiques from the area.

We picked a relatively quiet weekend in early spring to stay at the inn, but quickly found ourselves part of a large extended family as George and Katie’s adult children and their families gathered at the inn for the holiday weekend. The spacious James Wallace Parlour room where we stayed during the weekend offered us a quiet and private retreat, but Easter morning brunch was an especially festive occasion as the extended Hoy family gathered for a meal. The gregarious group readily included us as family-for-the-weekend and made sure the Easter rabbit delivered a couple of extra chocolate bunnies for their guests from Michigan.

 

 

The Inn at Brandywine Falls feels particularly homey because the innkeepers live on-site and the home offers plenty of common areas to visit with the Hoys and their other guests, get a little work done (the inn offers free Wi-Fi), relax or borrow a book from the inn’s library to read during your stay.

Settlers who came to the area in the early 1800s saw Brandywine Falls as a ready source of power. The Village of Brandywine became one of the earliest settlements in the Cuyahoga Valley with numerous saw, grist and woolen mills relying on the falls for power and driving the development of the area starting around 1814. Brandywine Village eventually faded into history, with the exception of the James Wallace house built by the son of one of the area’s first settlers and now serving as home to the Inn at Brandywine Falls.

The inn is part of the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park and is on the National Register of Historic Places, although a special arrangement allows George and Katie to continue operating and living at the inn for their lifetime.

 

 

We loved being able to step out of the house and walk over to Brandywine Falls via the 1.5-mile Brandywine Gorge Trail. The trail’s boardwalk follows along the gorge’s edge and a series of fairly steep steps takes hikers to the lower Brandywine Creek level for a closer look at the waterfalls.

Brandywine Falls seems to top most lists of favorite park attractions, and we spent much of our weekend taking photos of the falls. There are also several smaller waterfalls in the park and surrounding area worth seeking out if you have a couple of days to visit the area.

 

 

Read more about our visit to the rest of the park in History and nature trace a path through Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

We have some great National Parks in the Midwest. Read about seven of these wonderful parks in my story, Seven sensational Great Lakes National Parks.

Also check out nearby Chagrin Falls, another one of our favorite small-town destinations in the Cleveland area in my story, Chagrin Falls conundrum.

© Dominique King 2009

Warm Western hospitality at French Creek Ranch Bed & Breakfast

Two days in South Dakota barely left us enough time to hit a few high points around Custer and its wonderful State Park. And two days at the fabulous French Creek Ranch, with its beyond-bountiful breakfasts, left us hungry for another visit to Custer and more of innkeeper Diane’s warm hospitality.

Tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist town of Custer and the roar of highway traffic, French Creek Ranch offered a quiet retreat for us after busy days of touring nearby Custer State Park, the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial.

We love the unique experiences offered by staying in bed-and-breakfast accommodations. French Creek Ranch offers the particularly unique experience (for city dwellers like us) of spending time at a working horse ranch that also welcomes equine visitors with stabling accommodations.

French Creek Ranch B&B is small in the sense that it only has three guest rooms in the main house, but house is expansive and offers an amazing array of amenities that include an in-house saloon, sauna, game and billiards room, wet bar and large sitting area. Guests enjoy a private patio for grilling and picnicking just steps away from outdoor activities on the ranch like horseback riding and fishing.

French Creek also welcomes guests traveling by RV with level sites featuring complete hook-up facilities.

One couple staying in their RV at French Creek Ranch during our visit served as assistant ranch hosts through a work-and-travel program, helping the innkeeper with ranch chores and helping visitors make the most of their time in the area. Their advice steered us to driving the Needles Highway, where we took some of our best photos of our trip.

French Creek Ranch proudly eschews the fussy Victorian décor found at some B&Bs for a sophisticated take on ranch living featuring Western and Native American furnishings and artwork. We settled into our Cowboy Room, which fully lived up to the promise of “refined but rustic” furnishings with its comfortable lodge-pole bed, Western theme decor and scenic countryside view.

Diane also offers a small selection of regional artwork and craft items from local artisans for sale, like the lucky iron horse shoe and cross combo that now hangs over the doorway of our family room.

As fabulous as the house and ranch are, the hospitality at French Creek rates as its best feature.

Days start with a breakfast beyond belief for someone like me, who usually makes do with an ice tea, a carton of yogurt or a couple of cheese sticks for breakfast at home. When the Web site advises guests to come hungry for a “full breakfast”, believe it!

Diane’s breakfasts feature entrees with Southwestern flavors like breakfast enchiladas or migas (a scramble with eggs and tortilla strips or chips), in addition to fruit or pastries and bottomless cups of coffee or tea. The breakfast table also featured an easy conviviality where Diane chatted with guests as she bustled around her kitchen and her RV camper hosts helped us plan our day.

We’d originally stopped in South Dakota for a couple of days at the end of a trip out to Wyoming and Montana with the intention of checking out the area as a possible destination for a longer stay in the future.

After visiting French Creek Ranch, we can’t wait to return to the ranch’s warm Western embrace and again experience Diane’s generous spirit and beyond bountiful breakfasts!

Related Stories

Begging for attention – wildlife at South Dakota’s Custer State Park

Threading the Needles Highway

Mount Rushmore memorializes larger-than-life presidents

© Dominique King 2009

Mischievous spirit at Pilgrim House Inn

“Your room is haunted!”

The occupant of Room 11 looked blearily startled at his breakfast companion’s greeting.

Room 11 was one of a block of rooms reserved at the Pilgrim House Inn for a group of friends visiting Newport, Rhode Island for a special event. Room 11’s occupant may have briefly wondered if partying with the group the previous evening led to an unpleasant morning after, complete with reports of seeing and hearing non-existent things.

Or maybe he dimly remembered an encounter with the spirit of Jessica, the little ghost girl who is the Pilgrim House Inn’s most storied guest.

Jessica’s mischievous spirit supposedly haunts this charming bed and breakfast inn located in Newport’s Historic Hill district, drawing visitors and ghost hunters anxious to catch a glimpse of her.

The three-story home, built in the late 1700s as a single-family residence, sits tightly tucked into a row of buildings of similar vintage.  The home later saw use as apartments for Navy families living in the historic harbor town and as overnight accommodations for dockhands, merchant marines and visiting fishermen.

The inn’s current keepers, Barry and Debbie Fonseca, took over ownership of the bed and breakfast in 2000 and became keepers of the house’s ghostly legacy.

I asked Barry about Jessica, and he said he’s yet to encounter her spirit. However, he said a group of “professional ghost hunters” visited the inn during January 2008 and reportedly detected some sort of image on the inn’s stairway.

Author John T. Brennan shares several stories of Jessica sightings in his 2007 book, Ghosts of Newport: Spirits, Scoundrels, Legends and Lore.

Brennan said Jessica seems to relish playing practical jokes like buzzing intercoms in empty rooms, playing a music box in the middle of the night or slamming a clothes dryer door and turning the dryer on. One group taking a Ghost Walk tour of the town reported seeing a little girl in an old-fashioned dress standing at the foot of the inn’s stairs, when there were no children reportedly staying at the inn that evening.

Most activity seems to center on the third-floor Room 11 and the second-floor Room 8. Read some of the guest books in various Pilgrim House Inn rooms to see guests’ reports of experiencing Jessica’s presence.

We didn’t encounter Jessica during our five-night stay at the inn, but we did encounter many of the Pilgrim House’s most numerous guests: the innkeeper’s rabbit collection.

Barry told me that his father-in-law, in an effort to draw attention to his house painting business during a slow time, drew bunny outlines on buildings as he painted them. The house painter’s daughter, innkeeper Debbie Fonseca, began collecting rabbits. The rabbit collection quickly multiplied (no surprise when it comes to bunnies, I guess) until bunnies now occupy nearly every corner of the inn.

A bunny guarded the door to our room, bunnies sat in the quiet reading nooks on the inn’s second and third floors, another sat on our bed and bunnies proliferated throughout the house.

Does Jessica play with the bunnies?

They weren’t telling, and it was difficult to imagine seeing a ghost as we enjoyed our breakfast that sunny September morning on the inn’s third-floor deck, with its beautiful view of Newport Harbor.

Meanwhile, Mister Room 11 didn’t seem to have any tales to tell, which disappointed his friends. But other Pilgrim House Inn guests and visitors believe that the spirit of little Jessica is very real and wonder if that little shadow they glimpsed on the stairway could be the inn’s most notorious, and perhaps most well-loved, guest.

© Dominique King 2008