Michigan

We're in Michigan, and while yesterday was a little exhausting, today is going very nicely. On the way up, we passed though Holland, and so we thought Flat Beatrix would like to pose for a picture for Carol and Fred. We plan to run back down to Holland sometime this week to get a closer look at their windmills and giant wooden shoe, but this is all we glimpsed from the car.


We are staying about an hour north of Holland in Muskegon. This is not as big a tourist location as the small towns south of here (Holland, Grand Haven, South Haven, Saugatauk, St. Joe) but it is a nice place. We visited the beach this morning, but we didn't take photos since we forgot the camera. The beach is part of Pere Marquette (yeah, that same guy was up here and they name parks after him up here as well) State Park and it was very nice and clean, with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan, and it's about a mile from where we are staying. Nora spent the morning shoveling sand into her pants and down my shirt, and on the beach towels and in Jason's shoes and even some into her bucket. Then we all hiked out onto the pier to see the lighthouse, then back to the beach for fried perch and fries and tator tots and mushroom burgers. It was a terrific morning.

About where we are staying... we rented a place I found on-line. It's held by a small realtor, and it's a little old and could use some new mattresses and slipcovers for the old couches, but overall its fine. If you bother to click on the link, you will see pictures of our realtor/and the house's owner, Dave, and our place is listed under vacation rentals. It's the yellow house. Dave is nice, but as we quickly found out he has a different set of priorities when it comes to vacation rentals. We have a grill in the back yard that is big enough to roast several small children and a television of similar size. It also has a terrific back yard with a view of Lake Muskegon (which is really a bay off of Lake Michigan). Oh and there is also a pool table, which is now doing a second job as Nora's changing table (don't act all horrified, it isn't a nice pool table). However, the kitchen is not what we would call well equipped. But things are freshly painted, though some of his other improvement projects are not quite as well executed. All in all it is fine for the week and now that we've revised some of my cooking plans, we are settled in.

We haven't checked out the rest of Muskegon yet, we were too tired when we got in. Although Mom and I did go to the grocery store, which was unfortunately, very similar to a Walmart Super Center - called Maijor or something like that - that was also extremely depressing and Dad, Jason and Nora explored the marina and found a very nice little grocery shop that caters to the big boats and yachts when they come in and now we are well provisioned. We plan to check out "downtown" Muskegon tomorrow when all of the bikers have gone. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that this weekend is Muskegon's Bike Festival so we saw lots of tents selling leather and tattoo services when we came into town, but haven't bought anything ourselves.

After buying all that stuff we were too tired to cook so we ordered carryout pizza and then, some of you might be aware that there was a certain game on last night with a certain international celebrity making a debut appearance for a team on this side of the pond. I'm sure Jason will make a guest commentary about that later.

Here's Mom and Nora this morning - posing on top of Nora's changing table, wearing the new apron that Grammy made her. She's ready for the beach but unfortunately Daddy and the Grand Marshall aren't up yet.


So, that's all for now. I'll post more later.