Beach Days

As many of you know it'd be tough to find a better place to spend a summer than Michigan. One of the biggest reasons for that is because there is access to so many amazing beaches. So since one of our main goals this summer was to enjoy where we're at now, we have done our best to take full advantage of those beaches as often as possible. This post is about some of those beach days.

Catching some rays out at the Saugatuck Dune County Beach.

The start of the season is always a little slow. Lake Michigan takes a while to warm up. And this year was especially slow due to a cooler start to the summer. So swimming isn't as big a motivator for getting to the beach. We did it a few times in June and early July, but for the most part we just went to a lot of random spots and took some nice beach walks. But once mid-July hit and the days got warmer we started going a lot more frequently for full on beach days, complete with relaxing in the sun and playing in the water. 

For a good full on beach day our favorite beaches are on the south side of Holland/Saugatuck. We've found that picking beaches that require a good mile+ hike to get in (like Saugatuck Dune State and County Parks) or a lot of stairs (like Laketown Dune) helps thin out the crowds. Plus those first couple beaches have a lot of public access beach space. So we went to those two spots a lot. We also got lucky a couple times at Pier Cove Beach near Fennville because there the parking is very limited, so it keeps the beach less busy. So if you can get a spot, you're golden. 

The north side of Holland also has some good beaches too, but the two main ones, Holland State Park and Tunnel Park, just get very busy, especially on the weekend. So we just don't go there as often. We did have one nice beach day at Holland State Park since we were there on a Sunday evening anyway for a church potluck. But on that occasion we were also able to ride our bikes in, which helped us bypass some of the chaos. The rest of the north side beaches are just access points at the ends of certain roads for the neighborhood. So the parking and the beach space is limited. We mainly use those spots for sunset beach walks, which we can do since beach walkers are allowed on even the private beaches. 

This year we had three main activities we would do on our beach days. The first was to read a book, or I should say Katie would read to me. We started going through some of Katie's favorite Agatha Christie books mid summer, so when laying out on the beach it became the perfect time for her to read to me. 

Second, we played with our Waboba ball. Don't worry, I wouldn't know what that is if I didn't have one. It was gift Katie's sister gave to me last year that has paid off with tons of use. Basically it's a ball that when thrown right can skip on the water. So basically it gets used as a more entertaining form of catch because its hard to predict/master exactly where it's going to go when you throw it. This comes in handy for both just a beach day to ourselves as well as when we have other friends along with us. 

A Waboba Ball, hours of fun guaranteed.

The third and our most favorite of activities is wave jumping. I mentioned in my blog post about going to the U.P. how we got to play in the waves for the first time this summer up there. Well since we got back we've had some pretty great days down here. It's hard to describe why it's so fun. It's just such a rush of excitement over and over. Nothing quite beats playing in the waves. Below are some pictures I took on one of our most recent wave-jumping outings. 

A wave coming crashing in.

Me with a wave coming at me

The two of us out in the choppy waters.

Katie about to catch the wave.

Katie jumping through a wave.

Last thing I'll mention about our beach days is our friends. I'm pretty sure the beach would get old or not as exciting if we didn't have people we could share our experiences with. That's not to say we didn't have some really good beach days to ourselves. But with our friends there, fun/silly things happen like in the bonus photo I posted below. I'm a little sad I didn't do a better job snapping more pictures of the various friends/groups we had out with us throughout the summer. But to all who took the time to join us... Thank You! You make our lives extra special. 

Bonus Picture: Katie getting rock therapy/
getting turned into a rocky skeleton.