9/24/07 (Monday): We're here in sunny Winter Park enjoying Mag and Wiley's hospitality. We leave next Saturday. I'm sad to report that the pictures for today's blog were inadvertently deleted from the computer. I'm really upset about it--I had some great shots of our travels on a day when the sky was quite dramatic. I'm going to see if I can recover them, but I have my doubts, and it will have to wait until I get back. In fact, it's more likely that the next blog will be of our travels to California! We head out around October 1. Hang in there--I'll blog again.

9/18/07 (Tuesday): I'm way behind in my blogging! I'm just back from five days in Ypsilanti with Tom's family, but today I'm going to blog about our days off the week before I left for Ypsi. I'll download pics and blog about my exceptional granddaughters and the fun we had another time.

Monday a week ago, we went into downtown Muskegon to explore a few places we'd missed. We took a walk through the historic area of town and visited the small, but very good museum.

Most of the homes appear to be from the Victorian era.












This is the Board of Education building. I don't know when it dates from--it's very dark and forbidding looking.


It was interesting to learn the history of the city, which basically parallels the history of most of northwest Michigan. At the end of the last ice age, this part of Michigan was blanketed with huge forests of spruce trees. Herds of large mammals, including mammoths and mastadons roamed freely. Nomadic bands of paleo indians hunted the mammals using stone-tipped spears. The mammoth and mastadon became extinct about 10,000 years after the arrival of humans, and experts speculate that humans may be responsible, at least in part, for their extinction. The early humans also used copper, found in the upper peninsula, which was soft enough to be worked with stone tools, and wove natural fibers into clothing, baskets and fish nets.

Over time, other groups of Native Americans were drawn to the area by the abundant natural resources. They banded together into tribes, which eventually merged and became known as the People of the Three Fires. They farmed corn, squash and beans, fished the rivers and lakes and traveled in birch bark canoes, and lived in homes built from bent saplings covered with birch bark or woven mats which could be rolled up and carried with them as they roamed.
French fur traders later moved into the area. followed by major lumbering companies. Muskegon's location right on Lake Michigan (almost directly across from Milwaukee) allowed it to participate in the growing maritime industries as well. Great ships transported people, raw materials and finished goods to many major Midwestern destinations. There was also good money to be made fishing the cold waters and shipping the harvest to tables all over the area. Many immigrants came from Europe and even as far away as China as industry flourished. The automotive industry helped the area to prosper even during the Great Depression.

During both World Wars, Muskegon was a thriving industrial city. Many warships were built here, including this landing craft which is now moored permanently in Lake Muskegon and can be toured. It's a really depressed economy here now, though, with numerous empty/abandoned factories and warehouses. A number of houses are empty and for sale as well.




We finished our day with a visit to Pere Marquette Beach for a walk on the shore at sunset. It was a very windy day, and waves were pretty big. These guys were kite surfboarding. It was great fun to watch. They were capable of actually flying through the air, many feet above the surface of the water, and even doing flips!



Tuesday (a week ago) dawned gray and drizzly (and cold!), so we decided to take a peek at the Country Dairy, a local tourist attraction that's mostly either indoors or in a covered tram. We enjoyed it a lot more than we thought we would! It's a working dairy (about 800 cows) that sells milk, cheese and ice cream to some of the local grocery stores (including the Meijers where we shop). They breed and raise the cows, milk them, doctor them, and bottle the milk as well as process it into butter, cheese and ice cream.

There were nice clean barns with feeding troughs where the cows had constant access to a specially formulated feed consisting of alfalfa, corn, vitamins and other all natural ingredients. The dairy advertises that their cows are "all natural"--there are no growth hormones or anything except medications for any diseases they may acquire.

We started our tour in the barn, where there was a newborn calf. After 24 hours, they take the calves from their mothers and put them in these "cowdominiums." Eventually, the males are sold and the females join the milk herd.

They were milking a batch of cows, too.

We toured the labs where they test the milk and the processing room where the raw milk is pasteurized and the butter and ice cream making areas. This is one of the bottling lines. They were bottling pints for schools and hospitals. They just got a contract with the Whole Foods chain for their butter.

This is the cheese room. One of the wheels of cheddar was a disgusting shade of blue because they'd added black raspberries as an experiment. The staff called it "Blue Cheese!"

We finished up our visit with lunch in their little cafe. Another great adventure!

I''ll blog again soon with my Ypsilanti visit.

9/7/07 (Friday): Big news--we accepted the job at Lake Piru in Ventura County, California! We'll head out probably the first week in October, and take our time crossing the country. We're a little nervous about crossing those big mountains! We'll work 20 hours a week in exchange for our site and free laundry. There will be two or three other Workamper couples on site and we'll get to plan our own schedules. Although it's a little further from Mark's family than we'd hoped, we'll have plenty of free time to make the trip.

The campground office here is closed now, so I'm not working any more. Wiley is going to put in two weeks, pretty much full time, doing some landscaping and work on the lakes. I'm going to go visit with Tom and Kristin for a few days next week--my last visit for a while :( Then we're going to visit Florida for a week the last week in September.

While we were off this week, we went north to Ludington on Tuesday and South to Holland on Wednesday. The weather was beautiful, if a little warmer than it's been before. This lighthouse at Ludington sits at the end of a long breakwater. We enjoyed walking out to the very end. Having weekdays off means we don't have to share the sights with a lot of other people!












On the way to Holland, we stopped at a state park. The Little Sable Light is one of the prettiest lighthouses we've seen. It's all brick and sits on top of a high dune. The lake was just gorgeous in shades ranging from dark blue to jade green.














The trip to Holland included another lighthouse, this one with a roof designed like roofs in Holland.













We took a hike. It was really steep, but the views of the lake were fantastic. It seems so strange to hike on what looks like mountain trails but they're sandy! As you get away from the lake, the sand dunes are forested with maple, oak and beech trees. The trail in this picture leaves the forest and goes down several flights of stairs to the beach. Gorgeous!





We enjoyed a stop for ice cream at this cute little beach store. It reminded me of summers when I was a kid.











We finished up our lazy days with a short bike ride on a trail near camp. A good time was had by all!

9/3/07 (Monday): Greetings from the cool and beautiful northland! We've had delightful weather for the last couple of weeks. It's been in the mid-70's every day and down into the 50's at night. Yesterday was my last day of work. The campground was completely full for the Labor Day weekend, but now everyone is pulling out. Our next registered campers aren't until 9/6, and then it's only two families. Wiley will work for about 2 more weeks doing some landscaping and lake cleaning, then we'll probably fly to Orlando for a week or so.

My digital camera died, and I bought a new one. Now you'll have to bear with me while I figure out how to set everything up correctly again. I just reviewed this blog after posting it, and I realized that the pictures are too big. I'll adjust that before my next posting.

We've had an offer in California! We're not making a final decision until the end of this week. We put out about 25 resumes to places all over the country and we want to be open to any other offers that come through. The offer is from Lake Piru, which is in the southern end of the Los Padres National Forest. We'd work 20 hours for a full hookup site, and there's lots of flexibility in the schedule. The downside is that it's about 300 miles from Mark and Heather. But on the upside, it's only 30 miles from the coast and it's gorgeous country. We're also waiting to hear from a commercial campground that's between San Francisco and Sacramento, a little closer to Mark and Heather. That would be a paid position, and the area looks pretty nice. We'll see--we'll make a decision later this week.

Last week we went to Tom and Kristin's for our two days off. We stopped for breakfast at a little place in South Muskegon. It had this really cool trophy room with specimens collected by the owner from all over the world.















We had a good time playing with the girls. They have this tent thing set up in the living room with tunnels and different rooms. All three girls enjoyed it. Granny watched all three girls Tuesday night while Mom and Dad were out. We managed to get teeth brushed, jammies on, stories told and songs sung by bedtime, but I'll tell you, it really makes you appreciate the work involved in parenting!





We took a back way home and saw some great scenery. Michigan is full of great old barns. There were lots and lots of soybean and corn fields, but this was the only field of sunflowers that we saw. It had to have been 10-15 acres of blooms, all facing the same way. Reminded me of some of Van Gogh's paintings.



We stopped for an early supper at this little diner. It was actually three old train cars--one was a diner, one was a bar, and one had bathrooms and the kitchen in it. Cool!








Last night after work we went back to our favorite spot, the canal between Lake Michigan and Lake Muskegon. I walked the beach while Wiley fished, and then we enjoyed a great sunset together. I love my life!