Day 5

I researched this trip extensively.  Even though I had gathered a ton of information we never made more than a loose itinerary.  That way we could choose what we felt like doing that day but not be wandering around aimlessly or wondering what we should do.  There were a lot of things on our list that we didn't get to do which was the nature of the list.  One of the places that had been a maybe we did and it was great.

It took us forever to get going every morning of our trip and Thursday morning was no exception.  We stopped at a store featuring cherry products in Traverse City and the best thing in Nyla's mind was the bin full of cherry pits.  She played in there for several minutes and we brought a few home with us I think.  They may have not made it out of our last hotel.  I'm not sure.


Nyla laying in cherry pits

After the cherry store we headed west and stopped at a rock shop before turning south.  I had read a lot of good things about the state beach in Ludington and with the kids asking over and over if we could go to the beach we stopped.  The state beach was actually several miles up the road from the city beach we stopped at but it seemed good enough.  This was Bohdin's favorite beach because it had waves.  He could have spent the entire day there I think.  We were only able to stay a few hours before Cora was getting too tired.  This is the beach we almost missed because it was cut from the original plan.














After the beach in Ludington we drove south a little further to the dune rides at Silver Lake.  The rides had really good reviews but I was hesitant.  It's a forty minute ride and I wasn't sure how cooperative Cora would be.  It turns out that she was mostly fine.  The ride was interesting and we did see a lot of sand dunes.  Because an endangered bird has recently had babies, we were not allowed to go to Lake Michigan which is their usual route.  That was a bummer.  It was fun and Bohdin and Nyla enjoyed it.






The driver told us these trees are actually 80 feet tall.  They can survive being mostly buried in sand. 




At one point everybody got out and we were able to run up and down the dune if we desired.  Bohdin rolled down but not all the way.  That's Silver Lake behind him.




Lake Michigan is behind the dunes in this picture but it didn't differentiate very well from the sky in the picture.







Nyla wanted to make a sand angel.