Traverse City

Spent my birthday weekend in Traverse City. We've never gone away for my birthday, so that was a treat. Of course, February's weather is a risk. The weekend's first two days had excellent weather, as this shot shows. Monday and Tuesday were a little less friendly. Better detail in the larger view. This is the dock behind Holiday Inn West Bay, where we roomed Saturday night before moving to Pointes North for the rest of our stay. Sunday morning found this excellent light, and this bird posed for my camera.

Traverse City. Last Monday's Winter Storm was just beginning to take shape when I stepped out on our room's balcony and took this shot....

Traverse City, Michigan.

I take lots of photos of ducks, mostly because I tend to hang out where ducks hang out. Every now and then I need to post one of those pics. I'd been photographing something else when these birds landed just a few feet from where I was watching. Obviously they're accustomed to having folks just standing around on the hotel's beach.... Traverse City, Michigan.

Another morning, another view from our Traverse City hotel.

Explored! # 392 [December 20, 2006] Thanks! From a "wayside" on the west bay.

It's just a hallway at a Traverse City hotel, though it doubles as sort of a balcony. Surprisingly attractive, though; most hotels in my price range have truly boring, utilitarian, and generally ugly, hallways.

We generally head north for Joan's birthday. We've stayed in several towns over the years but Traverse City's been our usual landing place. By late September the bay's sails have mostly taken shelter, but the town's still host to many tourists. This view, from last fall's excursion, is from the Holiday Inn's waterfront. It captures much of what we like about Traverse City, and about northern Michigan in general.

Traverse City, Michigan

One last Traverse City picture...

The next two paragraphs are a reasonably accurate portrayal of Kalamazoo's attitudes, as I recall them. They do not reflect my views--and certainly don't reflect the views of every Kalamazooan. Please don't expect me to defend them. Thanks. I grew up in Kalamazoo, and don't recall ever hearing a good word about our State Hospital. The town's view of the place, at least when I was young, was not unlike Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , except we didn't cut the inmates any slack. In Kalamazoo's mental image of the place, the asylum was inhabited by bad people who were being tortured by other bad people. No matter that we likely knew some of the staff, or that we may have had friends who'd been patients. The place was irredeemable, and we were pleased to see it dwindle over the course of the 1970s. The only buildings we made concerted efforts to save were the attractive water tower and the cute little gothic gatehouse . Moving the treatment focus into the community was probably a good thing for many of the patients. But for the city it was not entirely a blessing. We were still that State Hospital town, and now we had a new group of poor folks sharing the town's resources. At the bus stops the hostility could be palpable. Traverse City's asylum apparently didn't generate so many bad vibes. To all appearances, the town's always treated the campus as a big park, with magnificent buildings. I'm sure people expressed concerns and prejudices that were not unlike Kalamazoo's, but those don't seem to have dominated the social landscape. And TC's proud of their asylum, and making a serious effort to preserve it. Asylum's a good word, by the way. It expresses an aspiration that Regional Psychiatric Hospital (a later name for both complexes) doesn't even attempt. I imagine both hospitals sometimes--perhaps routinely--achieved that goal.

Somebody called these massive old buildings "mothballed." Works for me.

Both the Kalamazoo and Traverse City Asylums had enormous central buildings. Both also had substantial outlying buildings, which they chose to call cottages. This is one of those. I just love that tower.

Elsewhere on the former asylum's campus, they've converted cottages into condos. Here they've wrapped a very attractive porch around another of those neat towers I was admiring a couple days back. The Village at Grand Traverse Commons, Traverse City, Michigan.

Suttons Bay, Michigan.

Traverse City State Hospital, again. It's difficult to capture in a photo just how massive this building is. It goes on for a quarter mile or so, jogging a few feet--like here--every now and then. Rows and rows of windows. On the other hand, the black and white conversion has the effect of making the place seem pretty dark and forbidding. In real life, these bricks are yellow, almost cheerful, and the building's surprisingly attractive. Even though all the security fences on the porches and between the wings make it seem rather like a prison.

Sugar Beach Resort Hotel, on the East Arm of Traverse Bay in Traverse City, has this open space between the wings. In-season, you get a nice glimpse of the beach and the bay as you move the luggage from the car to your room. With Friday's strong north wind, things weren't so pleasant, as the tunnel took the opportunity to sand-blast us. The hotel has put up this nice windbreak for the winter. It doesn't work.

Finally, this morning as we left for home, the weather started to clear up. Here's my last look at the East Bay from our hotel room's balcony. This pic is a bit misleading, as the ice shelf only extends a few hundred feet into the bay this year. And the bent beach is a combination of the short focal length and the processing method. Two photos, stiched together with Calico, then cleaned up a bit in Photoshop Elements. The sharpness leaves a little to be desired, here.