Michigan - Day 7, part 1 - Grand Haven beaches and Grand Rapids Public Museum

Woodchip Campground, Byron's Center
Sunday, 7 July 2019

today's route

black squirrel

When we left the campground this morning, Dexter and I noticed another black squirrel running around.  I read online that they're fairly rare, but they sure don't seem so to me because I'm seeing them fairly often.

On the road south
I've noticed on all the roads I've been on in MI that there are warning signs at all the (many) bridges saying they may be icy or may freeze before roadways - typical signs in most states during the winter.  But in Texas, at least, they fold up and can be - and are - made not readable during the warm months.  Michigan's signs are permanent, which has made me understand how long their winters may last.

Grand Haven's only a few miles from Muskegon, and its primary claim to fame may be the "singing sand" on its beaches.  I'd heard about this sand before I left Texas and was eager to check it out.  I hoped that by getting there fairly early in the day, there might be few enough people to let me hear whatever the sand had to say.

Grand Haven

sample of public art in town

The town itself is lovely and seems to be extremely prosperous.  I'm guessing there may be a lot of wealthy retirees here.  It's been a Tree City USA for 25 years (their signs say) and is a Coast Guard City USA.  I don't remember hearing that title before so looked it up, and it's an "honorary designation intended to recognize communities of special importance to the US Coast Guard," per wikipedia.  There's a large Coast Guard station in town, and the town had a big Coast Guard parade on the 4th of July, with their annual 10-day Coast Guard Festival coming up at the end of the month.

Grand Haven sits at the mouth of the Grand River (MI's largest river), where it empties into Lake Michigan; there are boats everywhere, so I'm sure the Coast Guard services have made a big difference to this town and are worth celebrating.

There were dogs everywhere.  Everywhere.  I saw many many more people out walking than I would have expected this time of day - it was about 8:00 on a Sunday - and I think at least half of them had a dog.  And when we got to the beach - more dogs.  Hard to find a chance to walk mine.

The most accessible beach is Grand Haven State Park, which charges an entrance fee for the beach.  Immediately next door, though, with barely a separation, is the Grand Haven City Beach, which is where I went.  Much smaller but the same sand and no entrance fee.  I walked the dogs as far as my nerves would allow, barely avoiding meeting other dogs that were luckily as boisterous as mine (so mine weren't the obvious problem children).  They weren't allowed on the beach at this time of year, so I dumped them in the RV and went to the beach myself.

I'm guessing gull tracks

actually 2 red lighthouses

The sand is very fine, powdery and pleasant to walk on - the kind that doesn't stick very much.  There weren't many people, the only kids were a ways away and the only real noise distraction was the waves on the lake, but I'm afraid I couldn't hear anything I'd call "singing."  I heard it scrunch, the sound I've always heard on Texas beaches, and it was a nice sound - but I'd never have called it singing.  Oh well.  It was still really nice to walk barefoot on a cool white powdery beach early on a sunny morning.

license plate: "FINALLY"

The photo above right of the obvious lighthouse actually shows a second lighthouse, which is the little red house-looking thing farther out on the pier.  Apparently the two signals together were the aid mariners needed to navigate the river mouth.  They were built in 1839 and, of course, have been restored, but apparently have always been red.

Grand Haven has a drawbridge over the Grand River.  After years of living in Seattle, I'm partial to drawbridges, but all I got to do with this one was drive over it.

The drive east
I drove east through Spring Lake, Grand Haven's twin on the other side of the river, and apparently the home of many many churches.

I passed blueberry farms (they say the harvest should start this month, and I do love blueberries), corn fields (though not nearly as many as Indiana), and huge greenhouses with flowers and landscape plants.  I bought some tomatoes in Montague Foods the other day that were labeled Michigan-grown - good tomatoes,

I'm seeing a lot of flat land driving toward Grand Rapids.

I passed a sign advertising Vintage Train Rides, and when I looked them up learned there's a historic train running in this area from April (the Easter Bunny run) until December (the Santa run).  In fact, Michigan has 4 vintage trains - 3 in southern MI and one on the Upper Peninsula.

Grand Rapids's beginnings

Grand Rapids
Actually, I didn't see much of the city because the two museums I wanted to visit were right next to each other and to a main highway and, for once, the directions were easy to follow.  The Grand Rapids Public Museum opened at 10:00 but had only a parking garage, which I knew I wouldn't fit in; the Pres. Gerald Ford Museum opened at noon and had an outdoor lot, but it was blocked off till opening time.  I was there at 9:00 so had my pick of parking meters - free on weekends - on the street across from the public museum.  Even better, we were in the shade for the first couple of hours.

The first thing I noticed were several signs saying, "Beware of Nesting Red-Winged Blackbirds."  I remember a place in Olympia I used to walk my dogs that had those signs up each year, and the dogs and I had close shaves with an angry bird once.  I hoped that wouldn't happen this time.

The next thing I noticed were more dogs.  Lots of dogs.  My parking spot was very near a Holiday Inn that apparently allowed dogs - I saw so many being walked nearby and there was really nothing else open in the area.  But I also saw people walking dogs who may have lived in nearby apartments.  Still, after all the dogs I saw in Grand Haven, and all the dogs I had to deal with at that KOA, I'm starting to think Michigan must be a haven for dogs.

Between the two museums and running alongside the Grand River is a park, which includes a statue honoring the Labor Movement.  Nearby there's a plaque titled "The Great Furniture Strike of 1911," a relatively nonviolent strike that lasted months and eventually achieved some of its goals, though it didn't seem so at the time.

public museum with Apollo capsule

Grand Rapids Public Museum
This is a great place to take kids.  All over the first floor they've got over-sized versions of ordinary toys.  Most people have seen large chess sets - I guess these were about 2' tall.  But they also have dominoes that are maybe 15" long, for instance, and many other outsize toys.  I noticed when I was leaving the museum that they'd been played with in the hour or so since I'd passed through.

Their first exhibit is about cars (this is Michigan, after all), and one item they have is an early RV.

Hayes Crusader Travel Trailer, 1937

info re: RV

I was ready to move in

"yacht-like luxury"

They also have an explanation about what is and isn't a fossil, and use as an example of a not-fossil, the skeleton of the whale behind me.  Which made me look behind me, and I finally found it: suspended from the ceiling.  I'd never noticed it (even though one of Leroy Jethro Gibbs's rules is: always look up).

view from below

view from above

This male Fin Whale was once 75' long and weighed 80-90 tons.  The museum's had it since 1905.  It was such a fast swimmer that few predators could catch it.

Its mouth had rows of baleen, which is fringed with tiny bristles that sift out tiny marine animals from the seawater the whale gulps.  Hard to believe this huge thing could survive on tiny animals, but Nature's specialization is a wondrous thing.

Throughout the museum, they've got small exhibits based on the alphabet (e.g. A is for automobiles, F is for fossils).  C is for carousel, and this carousel is one of the reasons I wanted to visit the museum.

restored to its former glory

its original Wurlitzer band organ

It was made in 1928 in North Tonawanda, NY, by the Spillman Co. and was in constant use until 1982 at an amusement park in Pennsylvania.  The museum bought and restored it, and I wasn't the only one who enjoyed riding it Sunday morning.

D is for dolls, T is for toys (though toys from my generation scarcely exist any more), P is for pewter, Q is for quilts.

Tumbling Blocks, late 1800s

Whirligig pieced quilt, c. 1900

Visitors can see their extensive quilt collection at a video kiosk they have.  On display was an explanation for how to make a quilt, with step-by-step instructions (one is shown in the lower left of the photo on the right).

M is for musical instruments and they have a number of them on display, including how to spot a fake Stradivarius. 

Jamaican rattle

They also had a volunteer of about middle school age who sat nearby with a table that held some unusual musical instruments from other countries and eras that he encouraged passers-by to try out.  Actually, he was so shy he could barely speak, and barely be heard when he did speak.  But once I got him going, he was very informative. 

The rattle in my photo was carved by stones, and I'm sorry that I didn't write down how old it is, but it's old.  It has small stones inside.

They had a beautiful relief map of Michigan. 

Michigan's highest point (1,979') is on the Upper Peninsula, which seems to have a lot of high ground on it, though it's hard to see in this picture because it was too high up for me to get a good photo of it.  I've blown up parts of this map and will attach them to the end of this post if you want more detail.

The UP (Upper Peninsula) is on the Canadian Shield, an ancient and very hard rock formation that also covers most of eastern and central Canada.  The LP (Lower Peninsula) consists of softer sedimentary rocks.  You can almost see the passage of the ancient glaciers over this softer land, gouging troughs that created Lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie with the water from the melting glaciers.

Grand Rapids is marked by a red X in the left-hand map, an area that is behind the table in this photo.  That map shows that I wasn't driving through flat land at all on my way here, except to the extent I was driving through the Grand River valley. 

The Grand River, I learned, was once wide enough to have real islands in it, and is still a trout and salmon stream for much of its length.  This really surprised me, because I'd understood numbers of wild Atlantic salmon were seriously diminishing.  I looked it up and learned MI salmon are chinook and coho, species of Pacific salmon, which left me with another big question of how on earth do they get from the Pacific Ocean to Lake Michigan.  It took a long time to find somebody who'd give me an answer, which is they got stocked here, beginning about 100 years ago, and they never get near the Pacific.  Instead, they live their entire lives in the Great Lakes, mostly in Lake Michigan, before coming in to Michigan rivers to spawn.  You just never know when you're going to learn something about your country.

And here is more info re: why the grand rapids are no longer.

how they looked

why they're gone

W is for watches and clocks, and they've got a doozy of a clock.

It was built in 1888 specifically for Grand Rapids's City Hall, which was (sadly and controversially) knocked down in 1969.  The clock was saved here at the museum.

as seen from below

On the third floor they had a temporary exhibit called Changing America, comparing the situation of blacks in America of 1860 to 1960, and 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation) to 1963 (the March on Washington).

1860

In 1857, Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will."

fascinating marchers rules

no one contested these numbers

Thus explaining disputes between labor and management, rich and poor, oppressed and oppressors.  And the tactics behind the 1963 March.  It was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and was strongly supported by labor unions and many working whites as well as blacks.

far l. John Lewis; far r. Roy Wilkins

16th St. Baptist Church/Birmingham

I led such a sheltered life when I was young that so much of these events is news to me.  Not the fact of the March, or the fact of the bombing that killed 4 little girls, or the fact of the sit-ins and other efforts, but what was behind them, what caused them, and what the reactions were.  It's clear I still have a lot to learn about the lives of my fellow Americans.

This post is already so long, and I haven't even gotten to the Pres. Ford Museum, so I'm going to post today in 2 parts.

Here are the close-ups of that relief map of Michigan.

UP

Upper LP

Lower LP