This morning’s weather in West Michigan certainly reminds us what is just around the corner as the temperature has been dipping into the 30’s now that the fall season is progressing. Many of our bed and breakfast guests checking in today are coming to explore Saugatuck and enjoy the beautiful fall color tour season. So hopefully the weather will cooperate enough to let them get out and enjoy our beautiful and romantic fall season.
The season is a great time of year for the Michigan u-pick and farmstands as well as the farmer’s markets. It is this time of year that one can find lots of fall comfort foods such as squash, apples, pumpkins and more. What a great romantic fall getaway activity to go to a Michigan u-pick orchards or farmstand together. Then this fun fall activity continues as you bring your Michigan produce home to cook with and smell the warm comfort foods of apples, squash and pumpkin baking in your kitchen. Yes, it’s definitely a great time of year to visit Michigan!
Just last year, our bed and breakfast guests were complaining about the lack of selection of pumpkins and gourds (especially large pumpkins) primarily due to a poor growing season for the orange and yellow wonders. But this year is definitely another story all together as the pumpkin patches of West Michigan appear to have a never-ending supply of pumpkins on hand for our Inn guests to purchase. Everytime we drive down the roads here, I seem to be reminded of this. I know that many of the visitors to this area of Michigan and the Saugatuck area have been buying pumpkins, but it seems as though the crop of pumpkins at the stands and markets just never seems to go down.
Today the annual garage cleaning and fall storage of the porch and lawn furniture began in earnest. While it always seems much easier to do this annual event in waves, a lot of it was accomplished today already. It’s just so much easier to do it while our west Michigan weather is still cooperating with the sunny skies and calm slightly warm days are still with us. It seems as though we must be accumulating more and more landscaping ornaments and lawn furniture though because the garage seems to get more and more full with each passing year.
Just outside the front door of our bed and breakfast Inn is a chalk board where we write the current day’s sunset time to encourage our Inn guests to take the time during the day to witness a gorgeous Lake Michigan sunset later in the day. The past few days as I write the current sunset time on the board I am beginning to realize that the daylight hours are getting fewer and fewer as we head into the fall season. Today is actually the first full day when the sunrise time is actually earlier and the p.m. sunset time (less than 12 hours daylight). It’s a sure sign of what is yet to come, but we won’t think about that just yet!
Today was the first day that I realized the annual ritual of falling leaves is starting to occur. Mind you, all across the Saugatuck and West Michigan area there are still plenty of trees that are still in the process of turning their vibrant hues of colors. Still, one can definitely find plenty of piles of leaves forming especially in the corners of the driveways and along fences.
One of our favorite stores in Saugatuck Michigan is the Butlers Pantry in downtown Saugatuck. They carry a lot of unique items that are hard to find in your usual cooking aisle of any larger store. I have been to many cooking stores throughout Michigan, the U.S. and beyond (love to browse through these stores to find unique cooking tools), and I can vogue that this Saugatuck store has lots of items that any chef or even casual cook will find no where else in their own local stores. It’s definitely worth checking out the next time you are in this part of West Michigan.
The fall season of the year is always crazy this time of year in our area of West Michigan and with good reason. The fall foliage is absolutely incredibly with colors blazing everywhere in the countryside. But nearby Crane’s u-pick orchards, corn maze and pie pantry restaurant along with their pumpkin patches are all in full swing this time of year. It truly is amazing just how Crane’s popularity has grown tremendously over the years. We are very grateful to have them as our neighbors, just one mile from the bed and breakfast Inn.
Every year, the Bed and Breakfast .com website, which is the leading worldwide bed and breakfast site, awards Inns with distinguished accomplishments for the year. For the 2010-2011 award season, the Kingsley House bed and breakfast received the distinguished award of Best in the Great Lakes. The awards are based on the reviews of bed and breakfast guests throughout the year across the globe. It is a great honor for us to accept the award as this is our sixth year of receiving one of their awards for being one of the top Inns worldwide.
Today there was a noticeable change in the weather as it was cooler and damp all day today. Our bed and breakfast guests that were here for several days made the best of their romantic fall getaway by doing more of the outside activities yesterday when it was sunny and warmer. But then this is mid-October and this IS fall, right? I guess we all have been spoiled so far this fall season here in the Saugatuck and West Michigan area with the incredibly beautiful and warm fall season that we have been having so far.
