This area is not known for an abundance of fancy cuisine but there are some pretty good restaurants around. When I’m here and want to eat at a restaurant, I prefer to go out to lunch and spend the evening at the moomincabin. Unless the weather is bad, I prefer restaurants that are nearby, meaning in the town of Brimley or on the res. Less driving time allows us more beach time.

Pickles was our choice today and we were able to snag a table on the deck (it was not busy in the early afternoon). I always get the same thing, the one-piece whitefish basket. I eat the coleslaw that comes with it (even though it’s mayo based, long discussion about mayo at lunch) but I never eat more than a few of the chips. The fish does not disappoint.

This view from our table got me in a bit of a story-telling mode. I am not sure exactly how true this story is but it’s one I’ve been told multiple times in my life and my daughters have heard it too. I can’t verify it because the original source (my grandmother) is long gone as are almost all of my parents’ generation. Whatever, it’s a good story.

In the pic, we are looking at Bay Mills Point. It is a mile or so from the little burg of Brimley (on the map it’s along the green lines indicating Highway 221 through town). The red line I drew on the map is where the remains of a train trestle lie sunken under the water. At least my busy little brain *thinks* that’s the location of the trestle. As the ACTUAL location is known, I guess I could look it up but I’m not gonna do it tonight. But it doesn’t really matter for the story. A train trestle used to cross the bay. (The moominbeach is about three miles to the right – east – of Brimley.)

My grandmother lived in Bay Mills when she was a teenager and attended high school in Brimley. At that time, the Bay Mills area was heavily industrial (now it is totally residential, homes and seasonal cabins). Trains crossed the bay to and from Bay Mills on the trestle and so did high school kids like my grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1888 so if you do the math, you may realize there weren’t a lot of automotive vee-hickles around when she went to high school, so no school bus.

The story is that when a train came along, my grandmother and her friends had to climb down over the side of the trestle to let the train by. I have a pretty hard time visualizing this but that’s what I’ve been told. I *imagine* that since the train’s terminus (I think) was in Bay Mills, it was not traveling at a great speed when crossing that trestle in either direction.

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