“Buy the smallest house you can fit in, you will spend much of your time outdoors.” That was the advice I was given by a friend when we moved to South Carolina with our three kids (plus one born there).
We spent many weekends exploring and hiking the three State area, but our favorite place was Transylvania County in North Carolina. A rather unique geology/climate combination meant there were over 250 waterfalls packed into one single county. Their motto was “Where the water falls and falls.” Now it looks like they use “Land of Waterfalls.” I guess they didn’t want tourists thinking it rained a lot.
I bought a book back then called “The Waterfalls of Transylvania County”… now out of print. It rated each waterfall on a 1 to 10 scale by its beauty, distance to hike, and difficulty in the hike. Super specific directions to each one, sometimes requiring this type of entry, “Pull over to the shoulder at mile marker 87, walk 100 paces forward, cross the road, climb down the embankment, look for two large rocks, and the beginning of a path between them, follow along for a mile until…” It was a great book. Our guidebook to many an adventure.
I wondered if something like it exists for the beaches of Western Michigan. So many beaches… national park, state park, county, township, private and very private. But alas, no such book. I did see a book by someone who walked all the way around the lake:
“A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach: One Woman’s Trek of the Perimeter of Lake Michigan”
We’ll consume our adventure in much smaller bites over the months to come.