The Friday Five, 8/4/23: 5 things I've been up to this week

This has been a super busy week and tonight should be fun: I am traveling to Sylvania, Ohio to see Lindsey Stirling in concert at Centennial Terrace, a venue I haven't been to before. Fun fact: this is NOT the first time I have traveled to Ohio to see Lindsey Stirling perform—the first time was to the Stranahan Theater in Toledo (which owns Centennial Terrace, actually) for one of her Christmas shows. We are staying overnight too and will check out the Toledo Zoo tomorrow. If you have a Detroit Zoo membership you can get half-off Toledo Zoo admission, too (as well as a slew of other national zoos).

Petoskey State Park

What I've been up to this week:

1. Girls' trip to Petoskey, MI. Two friends and I headed up to Petoskey on Saturday—originally it was just one friend and I, and we were looking at inexpensive hotels, but the third friend saved the day, as her mom has a timeshare in the Boyne area, where we stayed, and it was super nice; we had two bedrooms and bathrooms, plus a full-size living room and kitchen. We checked out the Petoskey State Park on Sunday, which was beautiful (see pic above), and also explored Boyne City and Walloon Lake. We even got to stop by Frankenmuth on the way back on Monday for a cheese and fudge excursion. 
2. Eating out. On Saturday, we stopped at Culvers for lunch, and on Sunday we had Red Mesa Grill in Boyne City for dinner. Sunday was lunch in Petoskey, at some food trucks we stumbled upon (Google led me to a grilled cheese truck, and to our surprise, there were 5+ trucks!), and dinner was on Walloon Lake with one of my friends' uncles. Monday was takeout sandwiches sitting by the lake in Petoskey. Yesterday my boyfriend and I also got Buddy's via Doordash—it gave him a promo, $20 off a $40+ order, and DD tends to mark up prices too, so we got an eight-square Yardbird (their new summer collaboration with Slow's!), with pulled chicken, and a four-square pepperoni pizza. Last Friday, too, my boyfriend and I were in Royal Oak and tried Alchemi, which was a little pricey but very delicious; the drink presentation, especially, was exquisite. 
3. Seeing movies. I only saw Oppenheimer this week, in IMAX at the AMC Forum, and it was very good, but I'm not entirely sure how to rate it; it was kind of stressful, which I wasn't really anticipating (the only thing I can compare it to, in that way, is Uncut Gems, with Adam Sandler, which was fantastic but not one I needed to see a second time). I'd probably give it 3.5/5 or 4/5, if pressed, but the acting was fabulous. See my Instagram video review here.
4. Shopping. On Saturday night we checked out Boyne City, and there were some fun shops there—mostly touristy ones, but there was a "Michigan made" one I really enjoyed, with a lot of cool handmade stuff. On Monday, we made it back to Petoskey and they have a lot of small fun stores there, including a bookstore and a few other places—I ended up buying a Petoskey stone for my boyfriend (the official state stone of Michigan!), a few greeting cards on sale at the bookstore, and a sticker for my car. 
5. Almost accidentally ordering two meal kit boxes. I luckily checked my credit card app yesterday (I check it frequently because it offers deals, but you have to "clip" them to activate them), and saw I had a charge for HelloFresh ... which was bad because next week I was set to order EveryPlate instead. HF offers live chat so I jumped on that last night and asked them if they could cancel the box, and they said they could—I still see it as "waiting to be shipped" online so hopefully the cancelation goes through.

Bluegreen by Boyne, where we stayed