Thursday (July 2nd), we tried another Michigan parks trail. This time it was a small free park called Warren Woods. The trail head again had no map, but the trail was in okay condition and in a pretty woods, so we felt fairly encouraged. This was furthered when the trail began to border a small ravine with a stream at the bottom – it was pretty with the promise of getting much prettier. We crested a hill and found some stairs leading to a beautiful wide wooden foot bridge. This was a very happy find, and so we strolled across the bridge to see what awaited on the other side. Here, the Michigan trail fantasy ended. On the other side of this fantastic bridge the trail abruptly ended in a swamp. We thought that maybe things had been wet and the trail might continue on the other side of the swampy area, but we saw no evidence of that and were getting swarmed by mosquitoes. So, Warren Woods trail turned out to be a great 3/4 of a mile long trail. We headed back to the car.

We drove up to Silver Beach in St. Joe’s to walk around the town and the beach. The town was building a carousel and ballroom near the beach; I will be excited to see how that turns out someday. I support a ballroom! The day was very windy, and so the beach was not overly crowded, although there were quite a few people out anyway. We walked along the beach and headed toward the dual breakwater/lighthouses of Silver Beach. The pier cautions people against walking along it, but it is very wide and fairly smooth, so people walk and fish all along the structure. We wandered out to the edge and watched the waves come crashing over the concrete, and we got to see a sailboat go out on the very choppy lake. After a very leisurely time, we headed back to the car and headed home. Happily, Mom and Marc came in that night, so we got to see them some that evening.

On Friday, we headed out with Mom and Marc in their car. They agreed to drop us off at Weko Dunes State Park. If you walk into the park, it costs nothing to get in, and then it is about a two mile hike back along the beach to get back to the Weko city park. We thought that would be fun. It was a very pretty day, and the Weko Dunes beach was absolutely mobbed. It was funny – there were what felt like thousands of people all in fairly close proximity, but if you wandered a little ways along the beach, the crowds disappeared. I guess it is hard to walk to uncrowded areas with a cooler, beach umbrella, and a four-year-old in tow.

The walk was quite nice, all in all. It turns out much of the walk was easiest if we walked in the water. There, the sand had been compressed into a hard surface that was pretty easy to walk on, plus the water was cool. On the occasions where rocks drove us back to the sand of the beach, the walking was much harder and a lot hotter. I’m not sure how long it took us to walk the whole way back to Weko Beach, but it was long enough that I was glad I did not have to turn around and do it again to get back to a car.

Back at the house, Aunt Linda and Uncle Kenny showed up, and so we had quite a crew for dinner (six in all). After dinner, we headed down to the beach to see the sunset, and as a bonus, the beach had three trumpet players playing “Taps” as the sun set. It is tradition for someone to play “Taps” at the beach when the sun goes down, but it is very unusual to get three trumpet players on one evening. It was a very pretty way to end a pretty day.