We’ve been back “home” for almost a week now, and we’ve been busy with family visits, doctor & dentist appointments, and getting ready for another school year.
We picked a different campground as our home base this year, Camp Lord Willing in Monroe, MI, and it’s very nice. The campground is open year-round, and there are quite a few long-term residents, but the RVs and sites are well-kept, and it’s very peaceful and quiet.
Tom is especially happy that the roads are all paved! It’s also a little more centrally-located between our families, and an easy drive for me to go to work. It’ll be a good place to call home for several weeks while we take care of business.
Before we left Silver Lake, though, we had a couple more days of fun.
Sunday was supposed to be rainy and cool, but again the weather forecasters were way off, and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We took a drive down to the Lake Michigan beach to walk the beach and see the lighthouse.
Apparently there was recently a ruling in Michigan that allows homeowners on lakes claim the beach as private, and on this stretch of sand the homeowners were taking advantage of it and had set up signs stating that the public was not allowed to walk on the sand; we had to stay on the edge of the water. Once we arrived back on state park property, we could walk in the sand again!
Along the way, we watched a guy kite sailing along the shore. It was a great day for it, with a nice strong wind off the lake.
If we had known it was going to be as nice as it was, we could have brought our lunches and had a picnic at the beach. Instead, after getting the kids to pose for a couple pictures,
we headed back to the RV Park for lunch. After lunch and some relaxing time, we gave in to the kids and rode bikes into town for some go-carting and ice cream.
Even the big kids had to get into the competition!
The ride ended way too soon, but the kids all had fun!
We finished up the day with some time at the pool, and a campfire in the evening. We also had a surprise meeting with The Boyink’s, another family living an RV lifestyle. We’ve been following each other’s blogs, with a common background of being from Michigan, but had never met in person. They just happened to be in the RV Park visiting family who we were parked across from, and we recognized them as they walked down the road! What a small world!
Our friends had to leave on Monday (back to work and school!), but we had a couple extra days to relax. The rain and cold front finally arrived, and the RV Park quickly emptied out. Our neighbor in the park was going up on the dunes and offered to take Nick & Bryce with him and his daughter, so that was fun for them . . . they said it was fairly tame up on the dunes, but chilly! They had a great time, though!
On Tuesday, we were back to beautiful weather, and we took a drive to nearby Pentwater,
where most of the shops were closed (recovering from the busy holiday weekend, I guess!), but we managed to visit our favorite shop in town.
From downtown, we walked to the beach at Mears State Park.
It was a quiet day at the beach, with just a few dogs swimming in the water, 
and a few boats out on the water.
We walked out to the end of the pier, where nick and Bryce climbed on the rocks . . .
mermaid rocks, I guess . . .
then we took a walk through the campground to check it out.
The views from the sites are certainly beautiful, but the sites are really just parking spots, and they are pretty small . . . too tight for a big rig, I’m afraid. I guess we’ll stick with the Silver Creek RV Resort when we want to be in this area, and make the drive up to Pentwater.
On the way back to the campground, we stopped for one last view of the sand dunes.
It was a great way to end our Labor Day weekend holiday, back home in Michigan!
We were surprised to find that the grocery prices we are used to in Michigan are actually pretty low – we paid more in almost every state, but especially Florida and Colorado.
