summer vacation 2023 {lake michigan & door county adventures; part one}

Hey, friends!

A few weeks ago, my grandparents and family went up and visited Door County for one of our trips this summer. We did so many fun things and made lots of memories, including visiting this beautiful garden, taking walks on the beach, eating ice cream at our favorite restaurant, playing lots of card games, and more. I can’t wait to share about some of them in this post!

Let’s start with the drive up there. It was a fun and interesting trip – involving non-existent donuts in 6 miles, a police officer searching for his donuts, a crying baby, and jokes about my hair – just like every long car ride with my family is. It was a beautiful and sunny Sunday afternoon!

Halfway through we took our obligatory stop at a Kwick Trip where for donuts and ice cream for those who weren’t in the mood to eat donuts. I re-read The Penderwicks on the way there and read up to the first three books in the series while sitting on the beach.

And at last, we reached our destination! As always, everyone jumped out and ran to the beach as fast as they could. There isn’t very far to run because the cute little cottage we stayed at was less than a 100 feet from the water.

Due to all the fires in Canada, the lake was very hazy in the evenings and practically blended in with the sky. Despite that and the chilly evening, the boys jumped in the water and had fun playing, even if it was pretty cold.

After playing on the beach, everyone was pretty tired and no one had eaten supper yet so we went in the house, made sub-sandwiches, and then went to bed after reading and talking for a while.

On Monday, we spent the whole day at the cottage. We built sandcastles on the beach, Grace and I went for a run, and then in the afternoon, all of us siblings – except Charity – played in the water. Grandma & Grandpa brought a couple balls and we had a ton of fun playing three drops and dodge ball in the water.

A fun aesthetic photo of me sitting reading The Penderwicks with sparkling water. 😁

That night, Mom, Grace, and I went for a walk to the end of our beach and to the canal. We visited both of those lighthouses when we went last year, but didn’t this year.

The next morning started off early with getting up for the sunrise! Frustratingly, I had turned on manual focus (When I usually shoot sunsets/sunrises in auto) so it was annoyingly un-focused. Still beautiful, though!

After breakfast and another walk on the beach with the whole family, we went and visited Cave Point. It was a windy and chilly day so the waves and seeing all the water on the rocks was pretty awesome.

I climbed down the rocks and had fun wandering around down below, taking pictures, and just exploring in the chilly water. Grace took these pictures of me–the poses are a bit weird since I didn’t know I was supposed to be posing, but they are nice to have either way.

Next, we headed to this restaurant that we always visit at least once called Wilsons. They have really good ice cream and not the greatest food, but this veggie wrap was delicious!

The next day, we drove further up the Penisula and explored some of the small towns and shops. We started off by giving this alpaca a visit!

We then walked to this place called Founder’s Square where we went to a fun souvenir shop, an art gallery, and candy shop.

The candy shop is always fun to visit because of the neat decor style. My family isn’t huge on candy so we picked up some taffy from the taffy boat and just looked around.

I wanted to visit a bookstore, but we ended up walking past it so since we still had time before we said we’d meet the boys, who were at the marina, we went to the library. It was a pretty big library for how small the town is, and all of us girls wandered around, looking for our favorite books and just exploring. You know you’re from a family of readers when you can willingly spend half an hour at a library without even checking anything out. 😜😂

When we returned to our cottage, a lot of us went down to the beach and built some sand castles. It was too chilly to swim, so we just enjoyed playing on the beach. The color of the water was so beautiful!

now, it’s your turn!

I’ll be back next week with the rest of the photos I took, including painted fish, some family photos we took, and more photos of God’s beautiful creation! Until then, let’s chat in the comments!

Favorite photo from this post? Do you like pools or lakes better? What is your favorite place you’ve visited for a trip/vacation?