After a couple of years globetrotting as interim innkeepers, we decided in 2019, to reply to a job offer on the website workingcouples.com, for a seasonal management job on Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan. Boutique Hotel Beaver Island Lodge with 14 rooms and suites and a separate log cabin was looking for operational managers between May and November. After an online interview we were offered the job and our first season of seven in total became the 2019 summer.
The Lodge was built in 1950/51 on the island’s northern shoreline as a hunting and fishing lodge, mostly to attract guests from the Traverse City area in Northern Michigan and some Chicago families en route to Mackinac Island. At a distance of 32 miles from the mainland, the island can only be reached via daily ferry, puddle jumper airlines with daily service from the town of Charlevoix or private boats and yachts from the Upper Peninsula or areas around Mackinac. With 55.9 square miles of mostly forested surface, the island is home to a year round population of about 600, many of Irish descent; hence the nickname “Emerald Isle”. There are only a handful of small hotels, motels and inns on Beaver Island, with one grocery store, one gas station with convenience store, 5 or 6 restaurants and a couple of bars, but a summertime visit is more than worth your while, as the island is truly a gorgeous piece of historical relaxation. Probably the reason why we returned for 7 seasons in total.
In the 2020 winter we were however not ready yet to be forced into an extended stay, as Covid prevented us from traveling anywhere. In hindsight we were probably holed up in one of the safest places in the world. When the world raced toward oblivion, the pandemic was a mere footnote on Beaver Island and that 20/21 winter we met a lot of locals, made great friends and learned a lot about the island’s fascinating history.
We didn’t leave the island until December 2021 when we accepted an invitation to come and visit guest/friends in Dryden near Detroit and from there made our trek south to see kids and friends in Michigan, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida.
We usually end up at our buddy’s river home in Florida, from where we planned the rest of our off season travel. With the uncertainties of Covid still hanging in the air in January 21, we planned a 3 week trip to the southern Caribbean where our St.Maarten friends and music buddy Jay and Monique had a beautiful home in Curaçao. They had recently moved from the Netherlands where we had visited them back in 2016. With plane tickets bought, we went for a last minute Covid test in Jacksonville, Florida (tests had to be done one day in advance of a trip to be valid). Now mind you those were very confusing and chaotic times and Covid test centers were hastily set up in abandoned shopping mall stores , staffed with little to no medical or administrative expertise. So of course on the day of our supposed departure, my test was negative, but Han tested positive. Flights cancelled and Han in quarantine, never mind he never had any symptoms, nor did I. Back to the isolation of our buddy Rory’s Riverhouse on the Santa Fé river, all old plans were canceled and new plans created. How about a cruise?
As a lifelong sailor Han was initially not eager to stay in a hotel on the water for two weeks, but a Carnival short cruise to the Bahamas we had done 5 years earlier, was kind of pleasurable, so why not give it a shot!
We decided for a 2 week Transatlantic from Ft. Lauderdale to Barcelona, sometime in February on the Princess Regal (the successor of the original ‘Love Boat’). To circumvent the required Covid test uncertainties, we tested both with Walgreen’s and CVS, with results arriving on the morning of our departure at the airbnb we had rented in Ft.Lauderdale. Everything went fine and with time to spare we embarked for Europe. Once in Barcelona we would play the rest of the trip by the seat of our pants.
Recent Comments