July 6, 2018
We left Empire, MI at 9:30 via M72E to Traverse City. As we passed the lake, we could see that it was very choppy and there were no boats on the water. It’s a good thing that July 4 was yesterday! We continued on M72 E through Kalkaska towards I-75. We past Bear Lake and Cub Lake (cute names) on our way to Grayling. At Grayling we got on I-75 S, our road for the next few days.
Our destination was the Pine Grove Campground in Birch Run, MI. We will be staying here for 2 nights. Today, I learned the downside to guiding Ken into the RV parking spot. While outside the RV, doing my job, I got pooped on by a bird! Yuck!
Birch Run is only a few miles from Frankenmuth MI. We drove into town and cruised Main Street. We found a great parking spot by Zehnder’s Restaurant. It was great because we were going to have dinner at Zehnder’s a little later.
We walked in and out of gift shops along Main Street and the lower level stores of the Bavarian Inn.
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After cruising the shops, it was time for dinner. We had been fasting all day so we could eat at Zehnders. Since we opted for an early dinner, the line was short and so was our wait time. Zehnder’s is America’s largest family restaurant with seating for 1500 plus guests. They serve 1,000,000 guests annually. We were disappointed that we didn’t get seated in the large Dining Room, but, instead we were taken to a smaller dining room with around 15 tables. Ther menu was a full-service menu of all-you-can-eat family style chicken dinners, seafood, steaks, baked goods and desert. We were there for the All-you-can-eat Fried Chicken. Our server, Sophie, was dressed in Bavarian/German Attire. First she served us Chicken Soup, Garlic Toast with assorted butters, Coleslaw, Cottage Cheese,fresh bread and jam, and Cranberry Relish. Our main course was Fried Chicken, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Dressing, Buttered Noodles and the vegetable of the day, Broccoli. No, we couldn’t eat all of the food, be we did finish with Desert. Ken had Vanilla ice cream with caramel topping and I had Orange Sherbert.
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The food was good, but the chicken was not our Mom’s crispy, fried chicken! It was a food experience, but, we probably wouldn’t do it again.
What better way to burn off some of those calories than to take a walk through Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland! Bronner’s is the world’ largest Christmas store with over 500,000 trims and gifts. The amazing store is the size of 1.5 football fields. It is open 361 days a year. The store’s address is perfect…25 Christmas Lane!
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We browsed through all of the sections with a plan that I would return tomorrow…ALONE!
We had a fun day in Frankenmuth!