The Dunes of Lake Michigan

July 20-23; Warren Dunes State Park at Lake Michigan. Since our trip to the woodcarver delayed our departure from Ohio and made us stay an extra night, we were a day late leaving for Lake Michigan. Since we had family meeting us there on Tuesday, this meant a 6:00 A.M. departure and an eight hour drive on the 20th. I loved taking off in the morning when the kids are still asleep in their beds. So cool! We have a lot of family and friends in both Chicago and Michigan so we picked this park on Lake Michigan sort of between some of them so they could meet us there. It was a fabulous whirlwind of a time. Karen's Aunt Ruth and Uncle Denny arrived at our site about 5 minutes after we got there. After a short visit with them, and after climbing about 1,000 foot dune, we headed over to Karen's Uncle Rob's beach cottage in Bethany Beach for a great dinner. After dinner we had ice cream at "The Well" and then headed down to the beach for a bonfire, swimming, and s'mores. This was our first visit to The Great Lakes and it was awesome swimming in the fresh water. We even swam in the dark and didn't leave until we were forced to by a rain storm at just before midnight!! We didn't get to bed until 1:00 A.M. The next day we woke up only about 10 minutes before Karen's college friend Ginny Heiken and three of her kids arrived knocking on our door from Grand Rapids. We visited with them for a while and the kids got along great running up and down the dunes. We were about to go the beach when one of her daughters started throwing up, so I ended up taking five kids to the beach by myself for a few hours. After the beach we cooked out and had more s'mores, before our dear friends departed. The next day our friends from our church in Tampa came to visit for the day, Jessica Warner and her two boys. Brian couldn't make it. He is heading up a church plant outside of Chicago. We had lunch, climbed dunes, went to the beach, cooked dinner, then went to The Well for ice cream. On Friday morning, a bit exhausted, we packed up and headed towards Chicago for a stop at Aunt Ruth and Uncle Denny's to do some laundry, camper clean up, and relaxed visiting prior to going into the city on Saturday.