We had intended to spend this day driving to Dearborn to visit Greenfield Village. We decided that we really wouldn’t enjoy six hours of driving to spend five hours at The Village. Instead we decided to hit some of the souvenir stands up and down “the main drag” of Houghton Lake.
Acting on advice from Angie Serafini, we stopped at The Rocking Chair gift shop. The main purpose was to get some fudge for ourselves and a block for me to take to work next week. The gift shop itself reminded me of the kinds of places we would hit when I was kid — lots of different trinkets with Houghton Lake printed on them, a few T-shirts, puzzles, animals made out of shells glued together, etc. It really felt like stepping back in time.
We stopped for Coney dogs at Joe’s Coney. They were quite good; although, they were a bit pricey. They were good enough that I stopped by there the next day to get a couple more for Tommy and me for lunch.
We had seen signs and flyers all over town for Zubler’s Indian gift shop. We noticed that they advertise an Indian pow wow with dancing on Thursdays. Though we hadn’t planned our schedule to make it, we drove up just as the pow wow was going to begin. I have to say that it was sort of lame, having the production values of an unrehearsed, school play, but it was the kind of kitschy show you talk about for years afterward. This gift shop too was like stepping back in time.
We returned to our cabin to relax for a couple hours and have dinner. Candy had bought a pan of baked ziti to throw in the oven. Baking it for two hours in the oven had the effect of heating up the cabin. We played dominoes for a while and then decided to head out for some miniature golf. We swung by to see if the Serafinis wanted to join us, but they were all out to dinner.
Putt-R-Golf opened in 1951. It is the longest miniature golf course in Michigan. Some of the fairways were incredibly long. Someone opened a Pirate’s Cove (franchise) course right next door. The woman running Putt-R-Golf, who had just inherited the place from her recently deceased mother, said that Pirate’s Cove was having little impact on Putt-R-Golf because of the loyalty of her patrons. People staying in our resort said that their grandparents played at Putt-R-Golf. While the course was in need of some repairs, it was interesting. We had a good time. I regret not having taken the kids to Greenfield Village, but we enjoyed the day more than we perhaps would have enjoyed six hours of driving, and there will be future opportunities to visit The Village.
