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.