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…
Category: Grand Haven
Grand Haven livability culture tourism why this town is one of the best
August 3rd: Mysteries briefly contemplated
After enjoying a fine meal and some great live music at our favorite brewhouse last evening, we made our way over to a nearby beach to catch the sunset. Our conversation drifted to… “where in the world would we rather be?” We’ve lived or vacationed all over the continental US and some of Canada. The…
August 2nd: Magnetic Beach
Today I remembered to bring a few magnets in a plastic bag with me to the beach, and lightly ran them across the sand. While Lake Michigan sand is mostly whitish silica (quartz), there are definite black specks that are magnetite… the most magnetic of all naturally occurring minerals on earth. Bigger pieces of magnetite…
July 31st: Lunch on the beach
We wanted to slips away from the tourist traffic that builds every day in Grand Haven with the Coast Guard Festival, so we headed a bit north. Enjoyed a late lunch at a place in Muskegon that my daughter recommended. Reminded me of a beach shack from years ago at Cocoa Beach, Florida. The crowd…
July 30th: The Coast Guard Festival begins
Grand Haven is the one and only Coast Guard City USA. With the ships coming to dock today, the festival begins in earnest. Our little town of 10,000 will see over 300,000 visitors this week. The Coast Guard is the only part of the military constantly on active duty… and since 1790. Their scope is…
July 26th: Apartment Living Revisited
Almost three months ago, I drove to Michigan, alone, racing ahead of the movers. Our house finally empty. Going from 3,800 square feet plus a 3 car garage to 1100 square feet and a one car garage… with neighbors soon to be only a wall and ceiling away. I stood outside in the cold breeze,…
July 23rd: I Love Mondays!!!
First the bad news. We stayed home last night watching TV, it was cloudy and we thought the sunset wouldn’t be spectacular. The above is what we missed. This morning we headed to the beach, our beach. Ours and just the birds. Gotta love Mondays, this weekend the beach had hundreds of people. The double…
July 21st: Blueberry Heaven
So far, we have brought home 30 pounds of blueberries, most of which have been frozen and added to the freezers. Joining the salmon, strawberries, chicken, beef… almost completely filling our chest freezer and decent sized kitchen refrigerator/freezer. I’m thinking I will have to take everything out and rearrange, since the salmon is way, way…
July 18th: Surfs up … almost
We were promised 4 to 6 foot waves. But this is all we got. Enough to scare away the fishermen from the pier, and enough to bring out a few surfers. Just not the impressive display we were expecting. Every day is different on the lake. I don’t know how I can ever tire from…
July 14th: The Magic Hours
With the water so clear in Lake Michigan now, the magic hours of dawn and dusk are even more important for fishing. The fish can’t see the boats above them. If you charter a boat for the morning, you head out before dawn. Or, you go late afternoon into the evening. We chose the latter……