a beach weekend

a weekend in michigan with family, on the beach, under the sun, is always one of our favorite ways to spend a summer weekend. if we can ride the ferry instead of sitting in the car in chicago traffic in 90 degree summer sun, that's really just the icing on the cake.

ferry ride to michigan. small girl under a big radar mast. radar mast? i made that up.


man, this beats the car. every time. (except the time we were all sea sick).


we didn't bring a car, but we did bring some bikes. heading down to the bikes in the car area, squeezing against the wall and waiting for the cars to exit, while balancing squirrely monkeys on our bicycle seats and shouldering all our bags? that was a little dicey, but pretty exciting.


and then it was all grand haven. we had a delicious pizza dinner at fricano's, where the pizza is the exact same kind of food i imagine they serve in heaven. we had some beach time, where these two spent some time cooking up 3 buckets of sand stew. yum.
 

ramona loves the boogie board,


and james loves rolling in the sand.


a portrait of two lactose-tolerant children and their lactose-intolerant mother.


rock hopping and climbing along the channel

ramona found a perfect opportunity for posed insanity in the nook of a public art installation.

we rang the coast guard buoy bell right there in coast guard city, usa, on the very first day of the annual coast guard festival. it was very coast guard-y. 

and at the end of the day, sometimes you just gotta get into you pajamas and dig into some corn and burgers.

one of my favorite moments of the weekend was watching the sunday night sunset with these two. no one told me to wear green.

the next morning was good bye, but not before a photo session.

while awaiting the arrival of the ferry to take up home, i saw two swans swimming under the car ferry ramp. 

and the journey home was full of sun and wind and happiness.

good bye michigan. we'll see you soon!