Walloon Lake was lovely as always. I think that was the longest stretch of time we've ever spent up there with my sister and her family, and it was wonderful. Her girls (ages 4 and 6) are really fun to be around, and time with them is always a high point for my kids. I love to see them together.
For a side trip, our two families (nine in all for whoever's counting) drove out to Sleeping Bear Dunes on the Lake Michigan coast. In another year or two we'll do the Dunes as a camping overnight because it takes a while to get there, but it's worth it even for a day trip. The dunes are a funny thing - when we turned into the parking lot I thought "that's ALL?" - I was expecting them to be visually bigger. But when you're in the middle of the dunes it really looks and feels huge. The sand is powder-soft and miles deep -- Steve dug holes deep enough to bury C and A vertically!Thing is, at the edge of every slope there are dune grasses and even trees here and there. In Michigan, even the sand dunes are mostly green. Wait till we get to the real desert where at the edge of the dune there's just more and more sand.
I love the feeling you get at the top of a mountain, when all you can see is a horizon of peaks overlapping like waves. I wonder if the desert is like that. I read that there's a place in Qatar you can go to experience "singing sands", where the sand is the perfect texture that it makes a resonant sound when it tumbles down the dune. I read a National Geographic article about another place with singing sand - that's something I want to experience.
It amazes me how we can spend four weeks - a whole month - at the lakes and it's still sad to leave.
BONUS READER QUIZ: What is wrong with the above picture? You know us well if you can spot the one thing that's just not right... Click on the "x comments" or "Post a Comment" link below to make a guess!
