Last weekend, some of our extended family invited us out to Lake Michigan to spend an evening on the beach. So we hopped in our jet and zipped on over.
Except replace “jet†with “minivan†and replace “zipped†with “drove for like forever to get there.â€
Since I know many who live far from the Great Lakes don’t know experientially just how large they really are, I thought I’d share a few pictures and point out the obvious fact that they are really quite ginormous as far as lakes go.
Naturally, the first thing we did was to test the water temperatures, which were reportedly at a sultry 64 degrees that day. The small people weren’t planning on swimming, but you know how that goes.
When I showed these pictures to my younger son afterward, he explained, “Yeah, that’s ‘cause the water was pretty cold. I wish I was from around here because then I don’t think the water would seem as cold to me.†This is the boy who’s lived in the South since he was six weeks old. Maybe that’s why my eldest didn’t protest quite as much; he had two years of living in Chicago to build up a defense against so-darn-chilly.
Then, some of us took a walk along the beach.
My son and his cousin cleared a path between the birds for us, as clearly I was not the only person present who’s adverse to downward-headed bird excrement. This didn’t really work and made the birds fly toward us instead, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.
And the fact that, as far as I know, we all managed to get away unscathed.
After the walk, my younger two children convinced me to climb a dune with them, a rare treat since we don’t climb the ones near us because, while they offer considerable hurricane protection to our island, they’re still rather fragile. Oh, and these dunes are a tad 20,000 leagues larger than ours.
I sort of forgot about this fact when I committed to climb, and I sort of forgot to put a height-contingency clause into my promise. So I climbed up the first small dune near us, only to be met with this challenge:
This is when I remembered that when I declared myself “forever 29†lo these many years ago, that didn’t mean it would always work; sometimes, the situation just makes you feel slightly older.
I totally felt every bit of 31 going up that huge dune, y’all.
I let my son and daughter go first so I could watch them a minute.
My older son apparently caught wind of what his siblings were up to, because suddenly he came flying by me, running toward the dune. There he is, the gray-shirted dot toward the bottom, my other two children being the two specks toward the top of the dune.
Finally, we all make it to the top, and I turned to see the view from this high up.
Later, we all found a smaller dune and positioned ourselves to watch the sunset. (Apparently, the sunrise eludes everyone on this side of the lake. Weird.) We didn’t stay for its entirety, as the clouds threatened to block some of it anyway, but the part we watched was beautiful.
All and all, not too shabby.
For a lake, anyway. 🙂