Saugatuck

12th – 19th Aug: Days 126 – 133

Yup. Still in Michigan.

Back, back, back in the midsts of time (April), when we were staying with Dean and Lori in Seattle, kitting out the Tin Can and starting to formulate our route, they expressed an interest in coming and finding us somewhere along the way.  They weren’t fussy when or where, but we agreed it should be a summery spot somewhere that they hadn’t been before.  This was a fairly broad remit on the location front as they are ‘coasters’, have done a lot of flying over the States but not so many touch-downs. We settled on a small town called Saugatuck, on the lower west coast of the lower Michigan peninsula.

 

Reasons for this:

• We were vaguely heading this way.
• Oval Beach, Saugatuck’s beach on the shores of Lake Michigan has been voted in the top 25 beaches in the world by Conde Nast, and the 2nd best freshwater beach in the USA by Nat Geo Traveller.
• It is a very cool, lakeside town full of galleries, eateries, safe cycling and water sportsy things to do.
• It was reasonably easy for Dean and Lori to get to from Seattle (Just a 4 hour flight and a 3 hour train ride…I did say reasonably)
• Sarah McWilliams recommended it. (Good call, McWilly)

Although they are good friends, sharing the Tin Can for a week was not a realistic option, so we splurged and rented a holiday home. A week in a real house which didn’t sway in the wind, with proper sewers, cupboards and showers. Bliss.

We arrived on Saturday, but the Seattle contingent didn’t get in til Monday evening. This gave us a couple of days to ourselves to get the lie of the land, do some shopping for provisions and generally veg out. We deposited the Tin Can onto the driveway, pulled out the slides and ‘Voila!‘, the biggest suitcase known to humanity. We hadn’t specifically requested permission to park the camper on the property and during the week we had an email from our landlord saying that he had been informed of its presence by a neighbour and he wanted to check that it wasn’t drawing too much power if it was plugged in. Reassuringly, small towns and twitching curtains are the same all over the world.

The house was about 100m from the lake and cycling the lakeshore road was an amazing opportunity to oogle some fairly impressive homes. The road cut between the houses on one side and the cliff top lawns with sunset watching spots on the lake side. Most of them had steps leading down to private beaches. Very nice.

We had a great week, cycling into and around Saugatuck, stopping in at galleries, shops and craft breweries. We rode the chain ferry across the river, (this is hand cranked by high school seniors as a holiday job), had a day sitting on the famous beach*, swam in the lake (which was beautifully warm and clear) and walked in the nearby Saugatuck Dunes State Park.

We did this on a windy day and the resulting waves limited the width of the beach quite considerably- occasionally to zero ft and wet up to the knees.

We had an evening out at a diner which had its own bowling alley (I only fell over once-boy, those shoes are slippy) and had a great few evenings at home (We now have serious BBQ envy). We even had a team outing to the laundromat. (The good times roll in all sorts of places). We saw lots of deer wandering through the neighbourhood (one was just chilling out in our front garden one day) and more magical fireflies at dusk.

So after much food, a reasonable amount of gin and tonic, plenty of good cheer and hours of marauding around on bikes like a gang of neighbourhood kids, it was time for our holiday-within-a-holiday to come to an end. We loaded TC up, packed, (by packed, I mean carry armfuls of possessions back into Tin Can.), jammed Dean and Lori and their bags into the back seats, and set off to Grand Rapids to drop them at the airport for their trip back West.

Next stop Detroit.