The climax and emotional end of the Coast Guard Festival is normally the Saturday night fireworks, watched by over a quarter of a million visitors. We stayed home that night, with traffic snarls into the early morning guaranteed.
Sunday morning we woke to beach warnings for rip currents. With the wind out of the south / southwest the worst place to be is in the water near the pier at Grand Haven State Park. The waves moving north crash directly into the pier resulting in life threatening rip currents on the beach. Good fun for the surfers, protected by being linked to their boards, but highly dangerous for anyone else.
We went to our other normal beach, North Shore. Surprisingly, our usually lightly attended beach was packed. We obviously weren’t the only ones choosing to avoid Grand Haven. Later that day, we heard about the tragedies at Grand Haven… seven pulled out of the water, two died, some still in the hospital. Red flag warnings, at the worst possible location were ignored, with sad consequences.
