Beach or Lake?

 After my last post I got some questions about what we consider a lake or a beach.  You can't see across the Great Lakes.  Lake Michigan is approximately 120 miles across so no, you can't see across.  Along the eastern coast of the lake, in West Michigan, the sand is like sugar.  Fine, smooth,  it makes for beautiful beaches.  Along the thumb of Michigan's mitten, along the west coast of Lake Huron (there are five Great Lakes - Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie and Ontario)  the coastline is stony, good beaches are hard to find.  This makes West Michigan a vacation destination in the first degree attracting people from  all over Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and much further. Up north along the little finger of  Michigan's mitten there are quite a few celebrity sightings.  Mel Gibson parks his boat there.  We are so very lucky to live here we sort of take it for granted.  Sort of.

We usually say we are going to the  beach.  There are so many inland lakes in Michigan someone would surely ask "which lake?" if you said you were going to the lake. But there is only one beach.

 PH and I decided yesterday to go to the state park I grew up going to.  We packed our chairs, hats, a small cooler of drinks and  headed off.

We stopped for lunch at the place we've been going to since the kids were little. It's almost like we can't come to Grand Haven without eating here.

One of the covid concessions many restaurants made was to close off streets to traffic and provide outdoor seating with space. Grand Haven closed off a whole block.   I am pretty strict about choosing to eat outdoors in the summer because we have so little time to do it. Michigan is definitely a state with all four seasons.

When you go to our state parks it's just a part of the day to walk the piers. Just about everyone does it. It's good people watching.  Lots of thongs.

 There were quite a few people fishing yesterday, too.  Like I said, you can't see across the lake.

The water was cold yesterday, too cold for PH to go in for a swim and he's not a beach sitter so as usually happens when we go to Grand Haven, after we've walked the pier we left.  We laughed because it just happens this way at this beach.  We plan for it, pack for it but don't sit the  beach.  Instead he has to listen to me tell stories about when I was a kid and every single summer Sunday of my life was spent here with my  family and aunt and uncle and cousins.  

In those days we would arrive on Sunday by 9:30 a.m., set our  coolers filled with our burgers and hot dogs on a picnic table under a tree and head across the parking lot to the beach.  We'd  play in the water, walk the shore to the pier, nap and build things in the sand while the adults played cribbage. At 5 p.m. we'd walk back to our picnic table in a median in the parking lot and,  those were the days, our coolers would still be there waiting, not pillaged, and we'd grill.  The adults would play cards for awhile longer and by 8 we'd leave for home.  Every.   Single.   Sunday.   I don't think it ever rained on a Sunday in the summer when I was a kid.
 

We've had a stretch of beautiful humid free weather and it's very hard for me to be inside so not much quilting has been happening.  I did cut for a  baby quilt and after this was taken it's sewn together but not bordered.  It's supposed to rain Sunday so probably then.  Oh, and the churn dash quilt is  basted and waiting to be quilted.