Little River Casino Resort and RV Park, Manistee, Michigan
Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23
Good morning, back yard!
It was a perfect morning! The kind when I love to get out before breakfast and take a walk. The temperature was perfect, there was a slight breeze . . .
Perfect!
Since it was early, we were able to walk around the giant parking area here without fear of being run down by anxious gamblers.
Wonder what a glow party is? The casino glows all day long!
The main entrance
We ran across a memorial to those of the Ottawa Tribe who served in the military.
Very nice!
This is the Little River Band Seal.
There’s our home, in the morning light
Then it was breakfast and a walk downtown and back up their River Walk.
What a nice place! Top three of my personal favorite downtown areas of all the places we’ve been – the two others being Charleston, South Carolina and New Orleans.
Since I’m a couple of days behind on my blogging, I’m going to cheat a little. Hope you don’t mind.
A couple of days from now, we stopped at the Manistee Visitor Center because I’d read they had self-guided tour maps and information. What a wonderful book they’ve put together! It has eight sections, two of them being Downtown and the River Walk. This book has directions, length of tour, history information, and if you hold your phone up to the weird looking squares, you get a video tour! Because of this book, I’ll be able to tell you a little about some of the pictures we took (very few pictures) – things we didn’t know at the time. 😊 But if we’d known about the book, we would have paid more attention to what we were looking at.
Isn’t this great?
It’s a sign in the window of a bar. : )
Built in 1906.
Upon completion of the first concrete floor, 23 men stood on the floor to test the structure. It sagged three sixteenths of an inch without cracking. Neo-Classic in design, the pillars on the bank are covered with scagliola, a marble-type substance.
The mosaic floor marked the completion of the building in October 1907.
The Maryland Building, built in 1887.
I don’t know who was in it from 1887-1909, but From 1909 through the mid-1960s, the building was only occupied by two owners who operated one business called the Red Cross Pharmacy.
The Ramsdell Building, built in 1891-92.
TJ Ramsdell was a local lawyer and philanthropist had this building constructed after tearing down an old wooden structure.
The red pressed brick, granite and terracotta-trimmed building was considered one of the most ornate buildings in all of Manistee.
A man named Jacob Hanselman opened the City Drug Store on the lower floor after the building was complete.
About 1898, one of Hanselman’s employees, AJ Piotrowski, purchased the drug store business, which he operated inside the building until 1975. In 1976, City Drug moved to a new location.
There’s a pub in the lower floor of the Ramsdell now.
According to Tripadvisor, it’s the best restaurant in Manistee.
So we’ve got this nice historic building, but I couldn’t find any information on it. : (
There are access points for the River Walk all along the street. Once we walked the street as far as we wanted, we headed to the River.
There was a section with a bunch of charter fishing boats. So many pole holders!
We saw a lighthouse and wanted to get closer,
so we walked, and walked and it got closer and closer, and then we discovered – –
we were on the wrong side of the river!
These ducks were funny!
One was swimming around and kinda pecking at another, then another duck started pecking at the first one until it stopped.
Translation?
Sibling picking on sibling and mom said, “That’s enough!” : )
Oh, and that bridge-looking thing in the upper left corner? That’s the walkway to the lighthouse. : (
But we (well, Blaine) could hear waves crashing somewhere to our left, so we walked – right into this nice Park area.
We went down to the beach and there was this break-wall.
There’s the lighthouse.
We’ll get there one day before we leave.
The waves were rolling and crashing – and I mean really rolling and crashing!) on one side, the other almost completely calm. So strange to see that!
This is the calm side of the break-wall.
You can see the waves crashing on the other side of the wall in the left of the picture.
What a blast we had here! And we got a little wet which was also fun!
This picture along with the next three, show the waves progressing up the break-wall.
And there’s Blaine, taking the pictures. : )
Blaine’s up on the wall now.
Until he got caught! : )
See the water bubbling up through the concrete?
Ooops! I got wet on that one! : )
After spending a few moments here, we left with a promise to figure out how to get to the lighthouse another day – especially once we saw that people were walking out to it.
Some information and a picture we found about the lighthouse.
This was at the Park – back in the back.
Time to return via the two-mile River Walk.
We didn’t really need the book information for the River Walk portion of our day, because they have information signs all along the way. We didn’t read many of them though, because the skies were getting dark and although we didn’t mind getting splashed on, we didn’t want to get drenched.
This is the Maple Street bridge today.
There’s the tower at the Ramsdell.
The Smith Street bridge today. All the bridges have signs that say you need to give two hours notice so they can lift/open the bridge for you.
The next two buildings were down a side street where we had parked the Jeep.
The Jones Building, built in 1872.
It was originally a combination dwelling and grocery/drug store.
After Mr. Jones died, his wife continued operating the store until it was leased to the Manistee and North Eastern Railroad Company and served as their “River Street Station and Ticket Office”.
The dwelling portion of the building was used as a residence by the family untuil 1952.
The Manistee Iron Works building, built in 1907, has a long history, which I’m not going into here.
In 1953, both the business and the building were acquired by the Michigan Tool Company which operated machine shops in both Detroit and Traverse City, Michigan.
They got bought out, and the business continued until 1981 when the company ceased operations due to lack of business.
Today, the building has been used by a Michigan Movie/Production Company as studio space, and also houses a cafe.
Since it was an early day, I cooked a little more elaborate dinner. But before I get into that, you need some background information. Last week one day, Blaine got hungry for lasagna. I had all the ingredients except ricotta, so we stopped at a local Walmart. Bad news for them and for us – – the day before, there’d been a major power outage in town and they lost their cold stuff. They were just beginning to restock with an “emergency supply order”. People were working like crazy to get stuff restocked, but I think it was disappearing as fast as they were shelving. The only ricotta they had was a large one that was twice the size I needed.
I tell you all that to say I had ricotta leftover. Not one to waste food, I searched for a recipe that didn’t involve lasagna or stuffed shells, and I found one for meatballs.
No time like the present to experiment!
I followed the recipe, except to make them bigger. I shoulda kept to the small size, because I had some trouble keeping them together when I was browning them. ☹
Still, they turned out really well! If you’re interested, the recipe is below. “Try it! You’ll like it!”
Tomorrow promises to be a long day, with lots of stops.
RICOTTA MEATBALLS
1/2 onion, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground beef
1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1/4 cup packed chopped Italian parsley
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/3 cup dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 (28 ounce) jar marinara sauce
1 cup water
- Sauté onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet over medium heat until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir garlic into onion and turn off heat. Transfer onion mixture to a large mixing bowl.
- Stir ricotta cheese, parsley, egg, kosher salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper with onion mixture until combined; add meat and mix until almost combined; stir in bread crumbs and continue to mix until thoroughly blended.
- Roll about 2 tablespoons of mixture into a 1-inch ball for each meatball. Pour 2 tablespoons olive oil in same skillet used to cook onions. Place skillet over medium heat and brown meatballs on all sides in hot oil, about 5 minutes. Remove excess grease from skillet.
- Pour marinara sauce and water over meatballs in skillet. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until meatballs are cooked through and no longer pink in the center, about 30 minutes.