When you live in the Detroit area, when you say up North, you are covering a lot of territory, not just the Lower Peninsula, but the Upper Peninsula as well.  We found ourselves going back to Crystal Mountain Resort and this time for a non-business trip.  With a trip like this, I also have to apologize as I am behind in my readings of my fellow Bloggers, but I will eventually get caught up again, as it was enough keeping up with the writing.  Since I have mentioned the resort often on these pages, I guess that I should mention a little bit about it, it located near Thompsonville, but to make it easy, it is near the wine country of Traverse City.  The resort was founded in 1956 and in the winter, it maintains fifty-eight downhill slopes, with seven chairlifts and two surface lifts, and is the only location to have an Alpine Slide in Michigan.  During the summer it maintains two eighteen-hole Championship golf courses and is the site of an annual LPGA tournament.  Conde Nast rated it one of the best “family ski resorts in the U.S.A.” and ranked it #1 for “family reunions.”  The accommodations include hotel rooms, suites, condominiums, chalets, townhouses and vacation homes.  I tagged along with my Bride and we met up with two of her other four sisters and their families in a vacation home that had four bedrooms, plus a huge loft for additional space, a full kitchen, dining, living areas, laundry, barbeque site and fire pit, not to mention a garage and a still unfinished basement.

We were getting together, because the Louisville part of the family had their youngest children who are twins that were accepted to the Interlochen Center for the Arts for a summer theater camp program that was culminating in a presentation of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man.  Interlochen was founded in 1928 and works with children from grades three to twelve as well as programs for adults as well.  The school is for music, theater, dance, visual arts, creative writing, motion picture arts and comparative arts.  The campus and grounds are located between two lakes on a very idyllic setting with two major theaters, one enclosed and one semi-enclosed and we were basically there between performances by Reba McEntire and a show featuring Steve Martin and Martin Short.   The twins are very honored and accomplished to have both been accepted for the program, as the students that were performing were from across the country, and two were international students.

We got there the night after the Louisville clan got there, and a day before the others.  Our catering company (well we should be) arrived with bags and bags of food and beverages, not to mention our clothes.  With all of the goods we actually were bringing with us for the week, we had to stop by for more food, as her Sister had an order of food to pick-up that they could not get to in time.  With all of the driving and everything else, it was now time to kind of relax before dinner.  We now switch gears and head to France for the wine that we were drinking that evening, and after a four-hour drive, not to mention all the schlepping of the grocery bags, we needed some wine.  We were enjoying some M. Chapoutier Belleruche Rosé 2016.  The Chapoutier family goes back to 1808 in the Rhone, but it was in 1879 that they stopped being farmers and began making wine and becoming negocient.  In 1988 Michael Chapoutier modernized the concern and switched from large Chestnut foudres to Oak casks for quicker aging.  He also began to become biodynamically and organic in the vineyards that he owns or oversees.  The wine that is made for immediate consumption is Grenache with Cinsault and Syrah.  It is aged from three to six months in Stainless Steel to keep the youthful fruit finish and it was very easy and refreshing and it was perfect to let us begin to rest.