July 19th - Michigan City, Michigan

Getting to bed late is no problem if you can sleep in the next day, and sleeping in the next day is not too difficult if you have nothing much to do. But we were anticipating an exciting day over at David and Gigi’s beach house, so we were up bright and early—definitely up but somewhat groggy you understand. Martin, being younger, was more resistant to these effects and fixed us a nice breakfast, which was good because I might have had trouble ordering in a restaurant!

We decided to 2-car it to the beach house because Martin would have to drive back that night, and the drive around the end of Lake Michigan went fairly well. I thought we had quite a few backups but Martin thought these were not really backups at all because he could keep crawling along in second gear. Depends on what you’re used to, and we were coming off of many weeks in the really sparse traffic of the desert West (except for Denver!).

The sun was shining out of a clear blue sky, so we spent the entire afternoon at the beach down the hill from the beach house. My sisters, nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews all trickled in during the afternoon. It was so good to see everyone again, and see them in a happy setting rather than at a funeral or some other solemn occasion. The younger children frolicked in the sand and water, and finally even us old folks donned our suits and plunged into the surf. The water was, by Lake Michigan standards, quite warm and I stayed in well over an hour playing Frisbee with my nieces and nephews plus Martin—we let him join because, after all, it was his Frisbee. Usually Frisbee is played on land, but it turns out that they float so it can be played equally well in the water altho it’s harder to move around for a catch than it would be on land.

Gigi fixed a huge dinner for over 20 of us, which is quite a bunch of very hungry, as well as very talkative, people. It really wasn’t easy because I’m on a low fat, high carbohydrate diet while others of my nieces and nephews were following the Atkins high fat, high protein diet. Gigi managed this by having salmon and flank steak combined with several salads plus potatoes and corn. Rob grilled the steak, salmon, and the corn in the husks, which I’ve never done but it turned out quite well. Ironically, altho it is usually the kids that are the problem eaters at a family gathering, this time the dieting adults were the picky eaters while kids were as good as gold and ate without any problems at all! It’s things like this that make me careful about making generalizations.

After dinner we watched the sun set over the lake. The reddish golden light reflected off clouds and the water and was framed by the big trees at either edge of the beach house lot. I even had a speedboat make a U-turn right in the middle of the sunset while I was taking pictures. The setting sun also lit up the house with a warm, golden glow that was very unusual and highlighted the huge expanse of windows facing the lake. I think some of the pictures turned our quite well—it really pays to keep a camera ready for those things.

For desert we returned to the beach to make a bonfire and roast “s’mores”. By that I mean a fire-toasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. Never having been a Girl Scout I had never done this before, so it was fun to learn to make them and delicious to eat them. Rob had purchased fireworks as he passed thru Indiana, and to cap off the evening he and Laura launched them out over the lake from mortars stuck in the sand. Other folks were doing the same thing up and down the beach, so I guess that this is something of a summer tradition around these parts.

For our part we were commemorating what would have been the 100th birthday of our mother, who passed away a while back. Phyllis and I agreed she would have loved the fireworks—she always enjoyed 4th of July celebrations. I distinctly recalled the last one I had been with her in Burlington. Several of the nieces and nephews had also come up that evening and we all listened to an evening Kiwanis band concert in the park and then watched the fireworks over the small lake. I have always found that taking good pictures of fireworks is difficult, but being really close to them and watching them being launched made it at least possible. After the fireworks we all traipsed back up the hill to the beach house for the night, and somehow we all fit in—I didn’t even have to set up the tent!