Lake Huron

A lovely row of tiny shells on the beach. I barely missed the dead, mangled gull in my picture.

I had been warned that if I went to Lake Huron, I should have beach shoes. Despite my Beach Freak book's advice telling me that Sleeper State Park has the "silkiest sand on the Thumb," there were indeed rocks. The sand was silky and soft where there was sand. The beach was great and after almost three hours driving, a welcome sight. We always wade into the water almost immediately after arriving at any beach to test out the temperature. As I was wading, I suddenly stubbed my toe and the stumbled on more rocks. This place had bands of rocks in the water with sand bars in between. We were all wishing we had our beach shoes on Tuesday! But, now we can say that we have officially been to the Thumb of Michigan.

I absolutely loved the drive. There was a lot of farm land with the rustic looking red barns. There is just something about driving through areas with rows of growing crops from barely sprouted soy beans to half-high corn to wheat being harvested. I kept wanting to pull over and take a few photos, but I was nervous driving because it was all back roads and I had to keep my eyes on the road and the few road signs so I didn't miss my turns. On the way back, I promised myself, I will stop and take some photos. The drive was even harder the other way round. I hardly ever print the return trip from Google maps; I wish I had! I will try to keep the snapshots that I took in my mind and will leave you to your own imagination!

I've noticed that most women who go to the beach do so to sit in their beach chairs or lay on their towels, dipping into the water when they are too hot and then going back to do more of the same. Not me. I'm usually as covered with sand as the kids and I must be a sight to the other lovely bikini clad ladies lying on the beach! My main accomplishment on this beach trip was to build Brigham a tower with roads and tunnels so that he could play with the car he brought along to the beach.



Elijah was my digging partner. He and I discovered how much fun it is to pile up a bunch of sand and then pour water on it slowly. The water doesn't run all the way to the bottom of the pile of sand, but soaks in, making a kind of sand-slide as it goes. It looks really cool. I saw the guy next to us build several castles and then fill his bucket with watery sand. He'd pick some of it and allow it little by little out of his hand changing his castles so that they had steep spires with a really neat texture to them. I've decided that I'm going to do that next time.


We (finally) brought the noodles and May and Sariah loved floating around on those. I overheard May calling herself the noodle queen.


These boys (Nathan and Brigham) are buddies. Near the end of the day, Nathan helped Brigham run around chasing gulls away. Brigham raced around with a huge grin, making happy sounds and then fell right asleep. Brigham's hair has turned almost blonde from all of his time in the sun. The rest of us just have some cool highlights. Mine go especially good with my millions of white hairs amongst the dark.