In Your SELF Interest: Traverse City Part I

Both Darin and I had thrown around the idea of going on a little weekend trip up to Northern Michigan while out here. We've heard so much about how beautiful it is and all the different things there are to do and see. Going to the Upper Peninsula (or U.P. as people call it out here) would have been really cool, but it was just too far of a trip with all the other driving we have going on this summer. Our initial point of interest was Mackinac Island, which sounded ssssoooo cool to me, but it was just going to be too expensive of a trip with the cost of the ferry and if we really wanted to see things we would have had to rent bikes (there are no cars on the island). So we put the trip aside until the night before we actually left when we threw around the idea of going to Traverse City which someone from church had mentioned to us. We decided to go for it and I'm so glad we did.

We went up on Friday evening after Darin was out of class and after eating dinner. Hotels in Traverse City were ridiculously expensive so we stayed in a little town about an hour outside of the city (3 hours from Ann Arbor). Lucky for us, hotel prices were actually lower the day of then if I had reserved it in advance, so I guess the early bird does not always get the worm (though usually).

Can I just say that I still feel like a little kid when I get to stay in a hotel? Like, that could be the extent of the vacation and it would be okay. Hotels feel like such a luxury.

We didn't get to the hotel until about 9:45 that night so the kids didn't get to enjoy the cool TV until the next morning while Darin and I got ready (like they have never seen a TV before...but it has cable! Not that Shae knows what that is yet and he actually doesn't like it much, because, hello, commercials. So confusing for a kid raised on Netflix).

After checking out of the hotel, we first went to the Sleeping Bear Dunes and climbed and climbed and played in the sand, of course, too.

Took Shae and I a little bit to catch up after going to the bathroom.

Belén walked a good ways, but then just kept getting distracted by all the sand around her so we took turns carrying her up and finally made it up high enough to see Lake Michigan.

We decided to climb up one more little dune to see what was on the other side and to get a better view. There were tons more dunes to climb on the other side which would have been so much fun if our kids were a bit bigger and more independent.

After the dunes we made our way over to a beachy area of the park to swim. Belén could not get enough of the water. She LOVED it. Trying to eat lunch was a joke because she would just get right back up and go right back out to the water. Something about the waves hitting her I guess.

Shae was a bit more hesitant.

Those smiles of pure joy!

I tried to get Belén to eat some food again while Darin went out for a little swim. She stood there watching him for a bit saying "Duh, Duh, Duh," and then finally marched right out to the water as though she were going to save him.