Heading North to Michigan!

Phaedra here after four days on the road:

We left Chapel Hill on Sunday and drove 540 miles to north of Columbus, OH. Now, that was a great campground.

Van Zanten, Vandenberg, Hoekstra, DeVries, DeLeeuw… Where are we? Did we take a wrong turn and cross the Atlantic Ocean? Oh, yeah, we are in Holland. Michigan, that is. We are on the west coast of Michigan right on the big lake. We came here because our folks have a really nice lady friend who knew them in Germany. They hadn’t seen Karen but one time since she left Frankfurt, Germany in 1978. Mom thinks that Zoe has energy! She has nothing compared to Karen!

We saw Mom and Dad “briefly each day” except for when they took us to Benton Harbor, St. Joseph, South Haven, and Saugatuck for the day. We visited Dad’s sister’s gravesite. We weren’t allowed out of the truck but we did hear them say that Carol would have loved the fact that we were there. I guess she really loved dogs, too. Then we went to visit lighthouses. That was fun – Zoe and I went walking out on the pier when the waves were crashing onto the walkway. Zoe didn’t like it too much, but I am much braver than she is, you know!

As soon as we got back that afternoon, they were off again for dinner downtown in Holland and off to watch Chimney Swifts entering a chimney. They were so excited about seeing 322 Chimney Swifts go down a chimney to sleep. Big Whoop! They could just as easily watched Zoe and me sleep.

The next day they were off to visit an authentic Dutch windmill that was the last one allowed to leave the Netherlands. They said it was really interesting. They told us that a lady in Holland, MI decided she wanted to learn how to make the windmill work. So, she learned Dutch, went to NL and studied under millers on how to put on the wings of the mill, turn the capstone around to catch the wind, ground the grain into the right consistency of flour, and then take a test to become the only certified Dutch Windmill Miller in the US. They loved the visit! Sometimes it makes me want to say blah, blah, blah. But they were really happy to see it. Oh, yeah, they had ANOTHER picnic down at Lake Michigan to watch the sunset over the water - without us! Life isn’t fair sometimes, is it? To top it all off, as we stayed home again, they then went to a preview showing of Ken Burn’s PBS series, The National Parks, and listened to a lecture by rangers. We were home! Again! Alone!

It’s now on to Grand Haven tomorrow. Maybe they’ll rest some and stay home with us!