Saturday, July 26th - a BEAUTIFUL day

We had quite a bit of rain overnight on Friday, but woke up Saturday morning to a promising day . . . and we stayed pretty dry overnight!

We had waffles and sausage for breakfast, and then discussed our options for the day.

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Our neighbors from West Virginia told us about a really nice hike to Paradise Point, a sand dune bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and the Manitou Islands. They also told us about some "secret beaches" along the Good Harbor Bay, which sounded like a great destination to us.

We packed lunches, loaded up the beach gear and the dog, and headed out. Our first stop was the Paradise Point Trail, and we weren't the only ones who thought it was a good idea -- we were lucky to get the last 2 parking spots! It's a 0.6 mile hike UP to the overlook,

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but boy is the view worth it! The day was really clear, and you could see for miles! We could see South Manitou Island clearly in the distance.

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Here's our group, contemplating the distance down to the lake!

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The kids would have loved to run down that dune, but no way were we letting that happen!

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The Gimmarro's pose for a family picture.

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We hiked back down to the trucks, and then headed down the road to Good Harbor Bay. There's a dirt road that runs parallel to the coast, and multiple locations where you can park and take a short little hike to the beach. We picked a spot, grabbed our beach gear, and headed to the beach -- through the woods, across a small river, and onto the sand. We all ate our lunches, and then spent a couple of peaceful hours searching for petoskey stones, swimming out to the sand bar, and napping! Even Casey spent some time swimming -- we found a stick to throw to her, and she would have jumped into the water to retrieve it all afternoon! It was an awesome afternoon!

Here are Bryce and his friend, Jensen, swimming back from the sandbar.

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Here's Casey taking a rest after her swim.

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On the way back to the campground, we stopped in the little town of Glen Arbor to walk around and check out the various shops. Our favorite was The Cherry Republic -- with more cherry products than you can possibly imagine! They had snack mixes, several versions of chocolate-covered cherries, cookies, salsas, candies . . . and on and on! The best part was -- they had samples out of pretty much everything!! We all enjoyed the offerings, and left with some chocolate covered cherries and sour cherry candies for the kids. Next stop was the wine and pop tasting room . . . there were several varieties of wine for the adults to taste, and a half dozen cherry soda pops for the kids to taste . . . we really liked the cherry cream soda -- YUM! Tom and I purchased a bottle of wine to add to our wine rack at home . . . we need to start drinking them - our shelf is full!

Arriving back at the campground, we decided to have pizza hobo pies for dinner, so we got a campfire going right away. This was the first time we have made the pizza version of the pies, and they were definitely delicious! Our friends use biscuit dough instead of bread, and those looked really good, too . . . more like thick-crusted pan pizza. The rest of the evening, we just enjoyed the campfire while the kids played Uno, and called it a night around 11:30. What a great day!