And now to Sunday, at last. We finally got everything together and made the drive to Silver Beach, in southwestern Michigan. It's daft to be going to the beach in early October, but it was also in the 80s and sunny and how long is it going to be before we can say that again? ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger got home late from a women's pinball tournament the night before and, after a couple hours watching the Flophouse podcast's live stream, and having dinner, stayed up late enough to make coronation chick'n sandwiches and get to sleep not early enough, really.
Silver Beach is just about two hours away. Why not go to a beach closer by? Other than that they don't get much closer a drive, what with Lansing being in the dead center of the lower peninsula? That's because, after failing to buy the carousel that used to be at Silver Beach Amusement Park, they commissioned a new one from Carousel Works. So the first thing we did was walk over to the carousel building and get two rides and also a discussion about whether I own a t-shirt from there. I don't remember it (I think), but bunnyhugger has pictures of me wearing the 'Ride The Raptor' T-shirt highlighting their velociraptor figure. I've got to find where that went. They don't still sell T-shirts, but bunnyhugger did buy a little passport booklet with pictures of all the animals. On exiting the ride you can have the ride operator stamp what you rode and if you fill up the booklet you get, I think it was, seven ride tokens. There's no way she'll achieve this, not unless we go there a lot more and spend hours just re-riding, but it's a fun souvenir and nice to have a way of tracking what you've ridden.
After that we hauled all our stuff out of my car, to a decent-looking spot on the beach, and discovered we forgot our umbrellas. It's my fault; in moving them out of the way to look for something I managed to put them against a wall we completely ignored while loading the car and asking ``have we got everything''? So it would be a day of making sure we have plenty of sunscreen on, and for bunnyhugger facing away from the sun. And so I have to correct myself as we got only almost everything together.
After setting up, though, and having lunch at last, I did what I least expected to do at the beach and slept. Like, for hours, just laying on a towel on the sand, getting pleasantly near melting under the sunlight. I was asleep long enough that bunnyhugger took her daily half-hour walk and more, and did some exploring to see just how big the beach was. (She missed an historical marker that I found, though, noting the launch spot for the first powered flight across Lake Michigan, from St Joseph's to Chicago, July 1913. We both missed a marker somewhere nearby noting Augustus M Herring's powered flight experiments there in October 1898.) I finally woke up when bunnyhugger got stung by what she first thought was a yellowjacket --- a problem of going to the beach this late in the season --- but turned out to be some other insect with less long-lasting bites.
Later on I actually got my bathing suit on and went into the water. The water was a little cool, but surprisingly good for October. It was choppier than I expected, though, waves sometimes hitting eighteen inches when when you consider you'll see tides as much as two inches. Also I swam much less than I expected to because apparently in the decades since I was half-fish I lost my endurance. How could that happen? But I also rediscovered how nice it is to float, just laying back, hearing nothing but your breath reflected in the water. Until a big wave comes and puts your head suddenly ten inches underwater. I again have no idea how long I was out there but it felt really good.
As mentioned, the waves were choppy. The wind was too. bunnyhugger brought a couple of her kites and used the time to get them in the air. I saw from far out of shore --- the seabed falls off very slowly and even rises repeatedly --- as her 40-foot-long long dragon kite twisted its way around and around. She couldn't get it as high, or for as long, as she wished, but it was going nicely for a good while. She flew the kites for a while after I got back in, too; she was flying until a bit after sunset, in the last bits of usable light.
We're not sure that we closed out the beach. We were there after sunset, and late enough after sunset that we couldn't see anyone else on it. We did see some people farther back, on the grass, with a karaoke machine and having a party or something. But we did our usual business of taking in every last drop of the day. Very glad we got to do that.
Another thing it's fun doing? Spending the day at Bronner's. Here's another half-dozen photos from last year's visit.
And now some of the many raccoon ornaments. I only pick up one or two a year, don't worry.
And here's one for the Michigan Central Station, in Detroit, but made of blown glass.
If you need a plush tiger considerably larger than your child, Bronner's is ready for you.
Or if you just need aliens in very tiny flying saucers.
Over here, what if your fursona dressed as a bee? We have you covered if you're a mouse, rabbit, or ... uh ... donkey?
The caption explains, 'This is the chisel which Wally and Irene Bronner used to remove a portion of the Berlin Wall'. I assume it's also the chunk of wall they removed and also that they did this all after about November 1989. Less trouble that way.
Trivia: In 1896 Octave Chanute --- then 64 years old --- set up a camp for studying gliders at St Joseph, Michigan, and with Augustus Herring and two other American flight enthusiasts performed over a thousand glides by 1902. Source: Mastering the Sky: A History of Aviation from Ancient Times to the Present, James P Harrison.
Currently Reading: The Theoretical Minimum: What you need to know to start doing physics, Leonard Susskind, George Hrabovsky.
PS: What’s Going On In Eye Lie Popeye? Who is this ‘Susie’? July – August 2025 in a recap of only a couple weeks' worth of a very dense comic strip.
