America

While we were in Michigan, we went with my mom to two of her favorite places. The first was Gales Pond County Park–a must-see when we are with her. It’s been a favorite place to take a walk all my life.

There were dragonflies all over as we walked across the boardwalk. They were sunning themselves in the last rays of the evening.

The children enjoyed seeing the results of a sapsucker’s visit!

It was a calm, beautiful evening.

A must-do at the dam is playing Pooh-sticks! First, sticks, or cattail fluff, or grass, or whatever comes to hand, gets dropped over the edge above. Then, everyone runs across the road to see the objects come through under the bridge, below.

I had never been to Otto Nature Preserve before. It’s out near the Lake, and must be fairly new. This is where most of the mushroom pictures in my last post were taken.

And when a child has the camera, you get pictures of caterpillars and slugs and a line-up of pretty leaves, too!

These are Indian Pipe. I had never seen them before, but they were common that day in the preserve. Despite their lack of chlorophyll, they are plants, not fungi.

The two older children got bored with our slow pace, so we sent them ahead to search for a geocache for which I knew the approximate location. They didn’t find it, though, until we arrived with the phone to find the exact place.

Miss Joy explored someone’s hut.

She also tried to fit inside a tree.

Back to Gales Pond! This was the evening we went out searching for several geocaches.

My mom loves investigating mushrooms. It was rather funny to see her telling people about or showing them mushrooms a couple of times, and seeing their eyes glazing over. My children’s eyes did not glaze over! They were most enthusiastic partners in the Great Mushroom Investigation at two county parks that we visited. I allowed my girls to borrow my camera, and ended up with at least a hundred pictures of fungi, most of which I didn’t keep. I’ll post our other pictures from those parks in separate posts; this one will just be mushroom pictures, so if you are the kind of person whose eyes glaze over, just skip this post.

Isn’t our Creator’s imagination amazing! What a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, just in two small county parks in Western Michigan. (Before you mention it, Mom, I know that one picture likely shows slime mold rather than a mushroom. I just thought this was the most logical place to put that picture.) Now, I’m hoping that we can find a white-spotted red toadstool while Mom is here in the summer, because she’s never seen one in person. I’m afraid that will be the wrong time of year for them, though.

We arrived in Michigan the first week of August, during a heat wave. For the first few days, we rested and caught up with a few people, and went to church with my mom. Then, on Monday, we were ready to do something else. The heat wave had broken, and it was somewhat overcast that day, so we decided it was a good time to go to Silver Lake and show the children the sand dunes. We took two of my nephews along, and the children had great fun!

First glimpse of the dunes across Silver Lake. I’ve always loved this view!

Starting up to the top! This is a very steep climb, but the sand feels very nice between your toes. I had forgotten how fine and soft it is–such a contrast to our coarse sand here in New Zealand. When we came back down later, Gayle and I were about halfway down when the children reached the bottom. They turned around and raced back up so they could run down again! I took a video of that as they came towards me, but since it includes my nephews I can’t post it here.

At the top of the dunes. I always feel like I’m in the Sahara Desert when I get up there!

All the children had great fun jumping from the top of the ridge of sand and rolling down to the valley. We had great fun watching them!

After we played on the dunes for awhile, we went around to Little Sable Point lighthouse. I didn’t get a picture of the outside of it this time, but took these pictures from the top. If you go to this post from several years ago you can see the outside.

That was a fun afternoon!

While we were in Michigan, we enjoyed spending time with almost my whole family. My children thoroughly enjoyed getting to know their cousins. In this picture, they were having an apple fight. The tree at the top of the hill was dropping thousands of small, green apples, so the children were pelting Mr. Imagination with them as he returned fire. They all loved it–we heard no complaints about getting hurt!

We often sat at my mom’s picnic table under the tree in front of her house to visit, so the children could play outside nearby while we talked. My little monkey loved the rock pile and the tree!

The girl cousins spent all of one hot afternoon playing with Grandma’s legos. They were building a candy store. The second picture shows some of the “cakes” they constructed and sold to each other and to us.

Another day we spent a couple of hours at Lake Michigan (aka The Lake). Unfortunately, the water near shore was saturated with algae. The children played in it for awhile anyway, but it looked nasty. They ended up having more fun playing in the sand.

Another evening at Grandma’s house! She wasn’t too happy about the barn kittens finding her house, but as close as she is to the barn, it was inevitable. The children loved it!

Lots of games were played on the concrete pad just up the hill. I never got a picture of the basketball hoop Mr. Imagination set up at one side, though.

We also went blueberry picking as a group one day. Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her under a bush.

They loved playing in my brother’s pond, too. This happened at least three times, but I only got pictures once.