Michigan - Day 1

We left for Michigan today (August 11)! I don't know if I am more impressed with the fact that we got out the door at 7:00 this morning...or that we had VERY MINIMAL fighting all day long!! We had a wonderful day - to say the least. I can only hope that the rest of the trip is this fun!

On the agenda for today: Warren Dunes State Park, Saugatuk, Holland & Grand Rapids (hotel).


Our first stop was at the Michigan Welcome Center (Rest Stop). Matt went on the search for "I-94 Crawl Series: Welcome to Michigan!" while I took the kids to the playground. He successfully found the box while the kids & I enjoyed our time playing. I had the kids sit on this bench with the beautiful backdrop of the flowers & lighthouse.

Within a few hours, the kids & Becki were swimming in Lake Michigan! We stopped at Warren Dunes State Park for the afternoon. Lots & lots of fun!!

After swimming for a few hours, we all headed over the dunes. It was VERY hot and the sand hurt our feet more than you can know! Here are the twins (holding hands) and Katie & Alex (two in pink 1/3 way up the dune). Alex climbed to the top!! Katie made it about 3/4 of the way up while Maddie made it about 1/2 way up. Soon after this picture was taken, Will turned around and came back to Matt & I.
We stopped at a nearby restaurant to change & eat a late lunch. It was just what we needed to sustain us for more sightseeing & letterboxing for the remainder of the day! We headed up the Lake towards Saugatuck. There were a lot of letterboxes listed as drive-bys in Douglas & Saugatuck. We were happy to get 7 boxes in very quick fashion. We ended up finding a parking space in Saugatuck and walking the town to find the boxes so that added some time. We missed out on 4 in Saugatuck - either missing or too busy of a location at the time.

I had wanted to show the kids Holland, MI - mainly the Dutch Island Village. So when we were done with Saugatuck, we continued to head north to Holland. We were very sad to find that the Island was already closed for the day!! It was 8:00 (with lots of daylight left), but it closed at 5:00. We were able to get this picture of the windmill and stopped to get a picture of Will by the train while Maddie admired the flowers.

Thus ended our first day - it was a busy, long day! The kids did really well considering how long it was! We drove to our hotel in Grand Rapids and settled in for the night...