One Night On the Beach

We start our summer vacation with a night at Grand Haven State Park

The first time my husband, Jeff, and I camped in Grand Haven, Michigan, we had an Eddie Bauer tent and a Siberian Husky.

We were in our early 20s, newlyweds, and I was still learning to love quick weekend adventures.

We set up our tent in the sand, doing our best to stake the tent down in the soft, movable surface. We enjoyed time at the beach, me barely swimming in water up to my chest and Jeff going out as far as he could. We rode our bikes. Jeff eventually persuaded me to take a dark stroll down the channel so we could watch the Sunday evening performance of the Grand Haven Musical Fountain. He wanted to relive childhood memories of camping with his family and watching magical performances of water, lights, and music once the sun went down. Instead, we got an evening of sacred music that did not live up to his memories. And then we woke up on our last morning to a tent full of water; the storm that had come up over Lake Michigan while we slept had so soaked the sand around our tent that the seals at the base failed.

Was it a perfect weekend? No, but it was a beautiful memory full of the Lake, long walks along the water, ice cream, and biking everywhere we could.

When I started planning our family’s summer vacation up to Northern Michigan, where we would meet up with my parents and three sisters and their families, I knew we would need at least one overnight stop before continuing north. I was making my plans later than usual, so I put my name on the waiting list in several Michigan state parks around Grand Haven. A month before our planned departure, a single night opened up with a spot right on the lake.

We were headed to Grand Haven for a Grand Haven do-over.

Unlike when we were in our early 20s, we would be returning as middle-aged parents to two high schoolers with two, not one, dogs in tow. We would be sleeping in a 35-foot travel trailer instead of a dome tent. And it would be our first camping trip in nearly nine months.

We arrived in the late afternoon, Jeff slowly making his way through the crowded campground to avoid hitting the many camping beachgoers returning to their sites for a dinner break before returning to the water. Out of practice from nearly a year of not parking the camper, Jeff managed to get us into the tight spot without much help from me. Then he and the kids hit the water while I walked the dogs and put enchiladas on the grill. Jeff’s parents drove up to meet us for a couple of hours, and friends from the area also drove out to see us and enjoy additional time in the 70-degree water.

Eventually, our son asked if he could take a walk down the pier, and Jeff and I joined him on a stroll past beachgoers fishing on the channel side and taking the risk to jump off the pier into the lake on the other side.¹ By the time we returned from a trip around the lighthouse at the end of the pier, Jeff’s parents were ready to leave, and our friends had departed with their young daughter.

Now it was time for some Musical Fountain redemption.

My poor husband has been tolerating my borderline mockery of my first experience with the Musical Fountain. It hasn’t been fair of me, I know, but it did not live up to the hype that he gave it, hype based on years of good childhood memories. Sacred Music night was not it. Fountain jets and lights timed to the music of classic hymns did not excite me. It had nothing to do with spirituality and everything to do with a lack of spectacle.

This time, we were showing up on Hair Band night. It was already dusk as we all jumped on our bikes and rode the mile from our campsite to the viewing amphitheater. After settling in with our ice cream, we waited for the show to begin. Surrounded by tourists and Grand Haven residents, all gathered for the show, we enjoyed a half hour of music, lights, and water from the fountain across the channel. This time, the show lived up to the hype. It was even entertaining enough for our teenagers to say it was worth the extra trip.

As we rode home, we saw occasional streaks of light brightening the sky. By the time we returned to our campsite, the lightning offered a spectacular show, building a storm across the water that pushed the waves onto the shore and stirred a wind squealing through tiny nooks and crannies around the camper. We all took turns between showers and dog breaks to watch nature’s own spectacle from the comfort of the picnic table right behind our camper. Storms on any of the Great Lakes are a sight to behold, and I was thankful for the front seat to a storm that never crossed to our shore.² (You can see the reel on Instagram, or watch the video without sound below.)

There is so much more we probably could have done, including just enjoying swimming in the lake, but it was time to continue our trip north. At least the pier gave us a nice, lit send-off.

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1. Pier jumping is incredibly risky at any time, but especially as the waves pick up and the undertow risk increases. There is at least one story a year about a young person pier jumping and drowning in Southwest Michigan.

2. Storms on the Great Lakes are not small events. By the end of our vacation, I would be persuaded to listen to The Gales of November, about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Great Lakes act like inland seas; they are not small bodies of water. Watching a storm come up over the lake is as incredible as it can be terrifying.