Down the road from the lighthouse was Grass Point State Park.  It was a pretty nice, simple park, that offered a pretty sunset view.

Your travel hosts.  Taken by setting the camera to a night-flash and putting it on a bench.

It was kind of interesting that in a field of grass you would also have this much exposed rock.  It reminded us of home and northern MN.

So began the LONG day of driving.  We left NY and crossed back over into Canada figuring it would be faster to take the interstate all the way to Detroit.  We had planned on spending the night, though, in Ontario camping.  Well, a friggin' torrential downpour changed that plan.  The rain and wind were so bad on the open plains that dozens of cars and trucks pulled over on the shoulder.  We really could not see anything.  I've been in snowstorms like that but not really a rain storm.  Anyway, since our camp grounds would have been soaked, we decided to press on to Kalamazoo, MI.  This made for a long day, though.  I drove through Toronto (worst), Detroit (pretty bad), and that rain storm.  When we crossed the border we were in a town with many downed limbs and blown debris.  We even saw a big tree branch fall and crush someone's Jeep in their driveway.

Now for the picture.  In the background is the original Kalamazoo Brewing company's brewery.  They have since expanded and have a larger one somewhere else.  In the foreground is the impressive Kraftbrau brewpub.  We decided to just get a motel room that night and let Donny have some drinks.  For the rest of the pictures of that night keep clicking until you get to the beer pages.

We left Kalamazoo and headed towards the eastern side of Lake Michigan where we planned to camp one more night.  Along the way we got a flat tire on the interstate.  So, we unloaded the trunk to get to the spare, and put on a nearly-flat donut tire.  We drove slowly on the shoulder and luckily did not have too far to go to get another tire.  Ours was not patchable.  It really only ended up to be a slight delay and we were sure glad the flat did not happen in the torrential downpour of the day before.

Finally we got to Warren Dunes State Park.  We thought, "oh, 'dunes,' that should be nice."  Little did we know...  Look at this monster dune we could climb.  Just how high and how steep it was might be hard to convey through pictures, but I tried.

Here we are at the top.  Do you see how far we are above the trees?  I had never seen anything like this.  Some people at the campground told me they bring a sled and slide down the sandy hills.  Check out the view looking towards the lake:  video  1.6 MB

Don and Jamie.  Taken by a well-meaning but not-very-skilled photographer.  I had to crop it so we weren't as small as ants.

It was such an unexpected treat walking through these dunes.  I'm telling you, I was really struck by how beautiful they were, especially with the color combination of the white sand, green grass, blue sky, and aqua water.

It was a good little walk.  It felt like we were kind of in the desert.  But eventually we got to the beach.

The waves were really kicking, and you can kind of see that in this video.  2 MB

This gives you a little bit of size perspective.  Check out how small the people look on the side of this dune.

Shadows were sweeping across the sand.  Kids loved these massive sand boxes.

The only bad thing about this campground is they jam the campers in pretty close to each other with little tree cover or distance in-between.

When leaving Warren Dunes State Park we realized we were in Michigan wine country.  Apparently the lake makes the climate warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer, and the sandy soil is ideal for growing grapes.  There are perhaps a dozen wineries in the area.  We toured Tabor Hill (shown above and on the beer pages), and also tasted some from St. Julian.

Next Page:  Madison, WI