Today we took it easy and enjoyed the state park. We took a mile long walk to Lake Michigan. We thought it was going to be a leisurely stroll, boy were we wrong! It started through gorgeous overgrown greenery (lots of black oak trees) on both sides of a sand trail. After a quarter of a mile we came upon a wooden staircase. This staircase went straight up for another quarter of a mile then back down just as far. After we made it over the stair case we hit the sand dunes. Going down the sand dunes didn't seem that bad or take that long. Coming back up was a different story! Once we got down the dune we saw Lake Michigan. The kids were blown away at how big it was! It seriously looks like the Pacific Ocean without the waves. The boys had a blast building forts. Actually this is pretty cool, the boys built the Alamo. I so enjoyed
seeing them take what they learned and understanding it so well that they were able to turn it into a fun game. Tanner built the Alamo and the surounding wall. He put rocks on the wall representing Travis, Crockett and Bowie. So Sterling decided to build a fort for the Mexican Army. He put Santa Anna on his wall along with other Mexican soldiers. Then the war began! The object of their game was to shoot cannons (throw small rocks) and knock down the other forts' soldiers. You were victorious if you could displace all the other Armies' lead
ers. The best part of the game is that they remembered so many facts from the Alamo. Tanner called for back
up from Gonzalas but that only gave him 32 additional rock men and Sterling made reference to Houston who ultimately took his army down. Peyton took sides with Sterling and kept telling Tanner that he was bound to lose because the real Alamo was defeated. He then switch
ed sides when Tanner mentioned that Houston's army was coming in to destroy Santa Ana once he was defeated. After the war we walked down the beach to a swimming area. It was a very cool beach. Then came the walk back! That's when we realized that on the way down the last part of our walk was a quarter mile straight down a sand dune! Now we were walking a quarter mile straight up a sand dune. This was quite a work ou
t! Did I fail to mention the humidity! We Californians are not use to the sticky, hot weather from hell. We all made it back a little sweaty, a lot sandy and very thirsty. We got a drink and headed to the showers. The rest of the day we played games (we opened a new game the other night called Wits and Wagers and now the kids want to play it all the time), rode rip-sticks, played with legos, got phone calls done and had a nice dinner. I forgot to mention the awesome lightning storm we had last night. The bolts were so frequent the sky hardly had time to get dark before the next one hit. Man if you haven't seen a lightning storm outside of California you are missing something amazing!
Once again I'm having trouble downloading pics... I will drop the rest in tomorrow.
