8th – 12th Aug: Days 122 -126
We slipped south again to spend 4 days in another lovely coastal town called Grand Haven. This is known as ‘Coastguard City USA’ which is a little bizarre seeing this is a lakeshore town, not a coastal town. We missed the town’s annual week-long fiesta of ‘Coastguard Week’ by about 2 days. This was both good news and a misfortune. These events are jolly, but the crowds make life a bit less relaxed. In the US the Coastguard is regarded as an arm of the military and federally funded, so they have some tip-top facilities.
Our site here was a ‘Resort’. (Code for pricey) It was full of very shiny and enormous fancy motor coaches, was beautifully coiffured and well appointed with a great pool, electric gates, a gym, and was only 10 minute cycle to town. There was a State Park, which was essentially just a great sandy beach with a carpark right on the edge of town, a pier, a light house and small boat marina. The town was quite well-to-do, without some of the posing that went on in Petoskey or Harbour Springs. It even had a Farmers Market twice a week selling actual fruit and vegetables.
Here we procured our 3rd haircuts of the trip. Important to keep looking snazzy on our travels and it gives us a tremendous opportunity to talk mercilessly about ourselves to captive hairdressers.
As usual we did some walking, biking, eating, drinking, with a bit of added loafing by the pool at camp and some loafing on the beach at the State Park. We did not avail ourselves of the gym facility.
The major excitement of our stay here was a quite short, sharp and spectacular storm that hit whilst we were having dinner at a lakeshore restaurant in town. It was a balmy humid evening and having tied up the bikes we started the evening sat out at an outdoor table, admiring the sunset. Then we admired the offshore forked lightening. Then we tolerated a light drizzle. Then not tolerating actual rain we moved inside, and just in the nick of time. Town was hit by 45mph winds, impressive lightening bombardment, thunder, hailstones and then torrential rain. We philosophically contemplated the prospects of getting home in one piece over a digestif, and then it was over. We cycled home without incident and didn’t even get wet a little bit. True story.
Our time on the west coast has been governed by the fact that from 12th August we are having a week in a holiday home in an town called Saugatuck and Dean and Lori are flying in from Seattle to join us. However accustomed we have become to living our small, mobile space and meeting new people all the time, we are really looking forward to a week on dry land with good friends.