Late July we took a day at the beach. We went a little farther away than the Lake Lansing Park that we don't visit enough. Not so far as to Lake Michigan, though. Instead we went to the Sleepy Hollow State Park, the nearest state park to Lansing and a place we'd never visited before together. This despite our always getting the state park endorsement on our car registration so we could drive in for free and, you know, do state park stuff.
Along the way there, though, we did stop at the Looking Glass River in the hopes of finding a letterbox. And for the first time in what seems like forever, we found it, hidden inside a spot protected by a spider and many, many ants. That'll happen. My recollection is we had to some repairs to the box, putting in new plastic bags so it could go back reasonably safe from the elements and without being menaced by ants. The spider will have to work its own deal out.
At the Sleepy Hollow State Park, though, we set up on the small sandy beach and pretty much stayed there all day. Like, just hours of enjoying being present somewhere without anything demanding our attention. And enjoying the evening settling in and the place becoming more nearly ours alone. And looking at the sandcastles that other groups had left, some of which had elaborate structures, including moats and channels running ten feet or more to the shoreline.
Near the end of the day, as ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger went for a swim, I walked onto a dock to discover something remarkable: a turtle. A big snapper, I think it was too. Hard to estimate how big it was, but I'd say certainly 14 inches, more likely 16, which suggests one that's getting to a respectable age. The turtle hung around the dock a good while, diving down and coming back for more pictures, from me and from people attracted to whatever the heck I was taking so many pictures of out there. This would include bunnyhugger who came over to see what all this fuss was about.
Later CST --- consulted about the age and behavior of the turtle --- told us that most likely, the turtle was hanging around, hoping we'd be among the many humans who toss scraps of food. None of us were doing that, of course, but yeah, makes sense.
We didn't quite stick around to sunset, although my camera timestamps do say we didn't leave until after 9 pm, which shows what being on Eastern Time does to Michigan in the summer. And this is the lower peninsula. The upper, farther north and (much of it) west of Chicago, has it even more severe.
And now, I am finally at the end of telling you what I was doing in July of this year. Who's ready for August?
Of course we're still on the 4th of July in my photo roll, but have got back to California's Great America and the countdown to fireworks. For instance:
A stage in part of the Planet Snoopy area, with a giant-size piano too low to the floor to be comfortable to play. What could this be about?
And as fits the comic strip yeah, the black keys are just painted on. I'm interested in that Peanuts blanket, but the sign does ask us to stay off the stage s that's the picture I could get. Does appear that the piano is a stage of its own, which also makes sense for the shows I imagine going on there.
Here's the far side of Lucy's Crabby Taxi, a ride that we were too large to go on. You can see it's not the most intense-looking of roller coasters but I'm sure it would crush our knees if we tried anyway.
Just a nice illuminated fountain by evening. You can see the water park in the background.
The giant glowing disc here is the Orbit, the Enterprise ride, as its nighttime takes hold. This is one of the park's original rides and I'm glad we got on it; Enterprise rides are getting terribly rare on the ground.
And a flying scooters ride by night. These are the Flying Eagles, is the name here, and as you'd think it's in the All American Corners section of hte park.
Trivia: An article in Illuminating Engineer about the opening of the New York Hippodrome claimed that ``there are over four thousand central [ power ] stations in the United States'' but that ``the maximum output of a majority of these stations is less than the amount of current used on the Hippodrome stage''. Source: The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements, Woody Register.
Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp.
