I have been up on the Middle Coast the last few days in attempt to talk to builders for our renovation project to our house.  Unfortunately my wife could not make it up, so I decided to take my 2 sons (4 and 6) with me, to extend their spring break.

In between meetings with builders, I made it a point to get out and spend some quality time with them.  We have our share of quality time, but with just the boys, its something that is rare (not a bad thing by the way).  I am sure every father feels this way, but when it is just you and your boys, you kind of relive your boyhood a bit (albeit much more responsibly).  Not only am I giving my boys one on one time with me, but I am also getting a chance to reset my own batteries and right my own ship.  And that is a good feeling.

Anyways, for the whole time we have been going to Warren Dunes State Park, we have never been to the north side of the beach.  Unless you know your state parks or are from southwest Michigan, you would never know that the state park extends north up the coast until it butts up against Bridgman’s public beach.  So there is probably another mile (at least) of beach that is pretty much uninhabited (i.e. no one has a house or beach rights, or a convenient parking lot).

So on our first unofficial beach visit to WDSP yesterday, we were walking along the water line north towards the last beach hut.  It had warmed up and the wind was blowing off the lake, so the fog that was sitting stagnant started to roll up into the dunes.  Very cool scene.

I kept telling the boys that once you went past the final sign that stuck in the beach near the last WDSP beach hut, it was considered the forbidden beach.  Of course that made them want to go past it.  And of course I knew that it would intrigue them.

After walking another 1/2 mile, I offered up the idea to venture over the bluff and see what was back off the beach.  I had no idea what was there, and they were up for the challenge, so I followed along.  The heat and sun were starting to kick up and keeping everyone warm so I knew we had some more time before someone was going to get tired or start complaining of being cold.

As we got over the bluff, we happened upon a valley between 2 dunes, with absolutely no signs of life.  And the dune was large enough that it was going to turn into a sizeable hike if we decided to tackle it.  I asked the boys if they wanted to do it.  I got a look from both like I was stupid for even thinking about turning back at this point.

We traversed back and forth, picked our attack line and moved.  It was surreal.  There was no one around.  I thought for a moment back to when I was a kid and playing Cowboys, or Star Wars. To have a backdrop like this, and walking through a valley, where anyone that was a bad guy (or the Sand people, depending on your taste for make believe) had you in their lair.  The battle was to begin…anyways.

As we trekked up the dune, I kept telling the boys that there were no footprints except for animals and that we were the first to find this dune and that we should name it.  After 15 minutes of iterations, we came up with Black Zombie Canyon.  Don’t ask why we named it that. If you are asking that question after reading this, you have missed the point of this story.

For about 2 hours on a fresh spring morning, there were only 2  people in my entire world that mattered to me, and I couldn’t have been happier.  For 2 hours I was showing what my childhood was like.  No video games, no TV, no texting.  Just making up stuff as we hiked higher, asking stupid questions like “who’s your favorite hockey team”.  And for 2 hours I got a glimpse of the character of a generation that is going to have it so much harder than we ever did, and came away confident that they will be fine.  They just need to have the space that we had to cultivate their imagination, instead of deciding which color their avatar was going to be (video game reference).

These moments will get less and less as they grow older. And in time my kids will be doing more with their friends and significant others.  But when I get these opportunities, I want to make sure they remember these moments at physical points that won’t change in their lifetime (and a cool name helps.  They will likely forget for a period of time of this adventure, but it will come back at some point, and when it does, we will be close enough to visit it while it is still fresh in our heads.  For me, I will never forget.

As we made our way home, the boys were very proud of their new discovery, as was.  The closer we got to home, I said to them, “you know, when you get to be my age, you guys will be able to come back with your kids and show them Black Zombie Canyon”.  They came up with 1 question: “Will you be there with us”?

Of course…

It seems that most people who frequent our area of the MC, their houses are not out of Architectural Digest (there are houses up there like that, but we are not part of that crowd). The houses are always works in progress. Problem is, when you come up here the last thing you want to do is go work on the house, especially when you have kids that are too young to understand what remodelling means. We would love to do it ourselves, but no time.

Another realization we came to, we wanted to do some projects that were just outside our scope of expertise. So we hired an architect in St. Joseph to help us along the process. We wanted to add a couple of bedrooms (using an existing attached garage). We also wanted to add a screened-in porch so that the family could enjoy eating dinner outside in the summer time without worrying about West Nile virus after every bite.

After the downturn in the economy, we decided to put the plans on hold. Just a bit of advice for anyone that wants to buy a second home: Unless you decide to use your 2nd home for a vacation rental, don’t rush into creating your “dream retreat”. It should be a long-term endeavor. Get used to your place. Allow things to frustrate you, identify what parts of your house really make you feel relaxed. Then you can tweak/refine what you need. Then you have what you ultimately wanted.

Bottom line, we are at that point now. We have spent enough time up there to know what we want. We have poured over the plans and have refined them a bit. Now we have our game
plan. Now it comes down to what we want to spend.

So this is what the new project is. I will be creating a section of this blog to chronicle the life of a construction project that will be done remotely.

Let’s see what happens…

New Buffalo getting tough on short-term renters

And that’s about it.

Over the past couple of months, I have been monitoring a growing (and scary) story that could irreversibly damage the Great Lakes.  It is the pending invasion of the Asian Carp species of fish into Lake Michigan.

From the limited amount of information on the web this is what we have learned to at issue with the Asian Carp:

• From the www.epa.gov website:
• Two species of Asian carp — the bighead and silver — were imported by catfish farmers in the 1970′s to remove algae and suspended matter out of their ponds. During large floods in the early 1990s, many of the catfish farm ponds overflowed their banks, and the Asian carp were released into local waterways in the Mississippi River basin.
• The fish can weigh up to 100 lbs and grow more than 4 ft in length.
• The fish are known to be voracious eaters, many times eating their weight every day.
• The fish are known to be scared easily and can jump out of the water (some website claimed the jumps can be a lofty 8-10 ft).
• The DNA tests have confirmed that the fish have been found past electrical barriers placed in the famed Chicago Locks (water from the riverways-Mississippi-that flow into Lake Michigan).

OK, I may have many of these facts wrong about these fish.  Stopping short of having them actually speak to people on the lake, this seems like a very plausible threat to the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.  The problem is that other Great Lakes have also tested positive on the DNA water tests (Ontario had a positive reading this summer).  So it is fair to say that the Chicago threat is not the first this region has encountered.  But an invasion on the West side of Michigan would confirm that the entire Middle Coast is at threat.

Of course, some morons are just blowing this off.  Short-sighted comments like “sounds like a fun fish to catch” or “it could be a new food supply for restaurants” is just stupid.  These fish can invade these lakes and ecosystem, then clean out the lakes and make this species the dominant species because it will kill the rest of the ecosystem off. 

In addition, it looks like our beloved federal government is not seeing this as a threat.  Last I checked most of the Middle Coast states (Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin) have supported a lawsuit against the state of Illinois to force that state to shut down the locks system until they try and eradicate the species in the river.  I am not sure what the economical impact is for the city of Chicago to shut down parts of the lock.  But I can say that shutting down the lock from flowing into Lake Michigan does not seem like a bad idea.  Living in Chicago, I can say that I never seen any commercial freight boats coming down the river and heading into Lake Michigan.  Sure recreational boaters come down the river, but at least the gov’t could seal the river off west of where the marina is and work their way back towards the Mississippi.

This is a new developing story.  As of now, the-MiddleCoast.com is in favor of shutting down the Chicago river from flowing into Lake Michigan.  But we are not educated enough on the situation to make a definitive stance on this issue yet.  If anyone has any more insight/comment/opinions on this topic, please post them.

Ship to Shore festival coming back to NB lakefront"?

Interesting take on Middle Coast residents getting better at recyling…bad for the economy…

That’s all folks…

Article on New Buffalo’s improved streetscape proposal.

Article about the upcoming St Joseph Ice Festival in mid-February

After a brief trek to the far northeastern point of the Middle Coast (Alpena, MI), we were making our way back down toward the SW Middle Coast and were alerted that there would be  a winter weather advisory for the whole SW Middle Coast for the next 4 days!  This will definitely make up for the rain-turn-to-ice weather we all had in Chicago over the Christmas weekend.

With the new potential for big snow, we made our way over to Warren Dunes State Park for some sledding.  This is probably the best place I personally have ever sledded (I have even been sledding out in the Rocky Mountains).  You can tell the first timers as they get to the top of the dune, take off and then realize they are going much faster than they expected to go on a snow/sand wintery mix.  It is a total blast and good way to utilize the nature of the Middle Coast that so many neglect when it is not warm out.

Happy New Year everyone!

What is also an “as usual” development, one of the websites that I have used to monitor news stories of the Middle Coast closed recently.  Now I will try and give links to interesting stories that I read that may be of some interest.  I will try and do this every couple of weeks.  In fact we will start this now.

• Chikaming Township preparing 5 yr plan for its parks system
• Couple of opportunities to have breakfast with Santa over next couple of weeks.
• Holiday party in Three Oaks.
• Meijer store coming to Stevensville.
• Good calendar of coming events.

There, that wasn’t so bad.

Seriously?  There were 70 yr old Europeans walking around the parks without issue.  And I totally understand if there are senior citizens that are trying to keep up with their grandchildren.  But a disproportionate amount of the people I saw riding these scooters were young and overweight.  In fact, we were stuck on a commuter boat because of the weather and there was a family that had a mother on a scooter, 2 children that were ~4 yrs old, a father and a teenager.  The mother couldn’t get out of her scooter to tend to her kids (only 5 ft away), the father was sleeping in the corner and the teenager was left having to deal with a set of twins that are having complete meltdowns.

I ended up having a flash forward moment at one of my son’s wedding and seeing a father escort his daughter down the aisle via a motorized device, because he couldn’t get off his ass and walk 300 feet…pathetic.  A sad commentary about our society in this country.

Not only is this blog intended to help vacationers of this area, but also the residents as well (especially the part time ones).

When we first bought our place a few years ago, our oldest son had just turned 3.  We knew that we wanted to try raising a family in the city (downtown).  My wife was raised in a suburb, and I was raised in a small town.  We knew our jobs would keep us in a major metropolitan city, and we thought it would be unique to have our children raised in a very urban environment.  But we also knew that we wanted them to experience nature the way we were exposed to it growing up on the Middle Coast.  There were definite compromises (mostly logistical), but we figured that we would somehow overcome them.

But once our son started to get to that age where he needed to be exposed to different experiences (athletic, artistic, etc), we realized that trying to get him into various programs was close to impossible.  For example, in Chicago if you want your child to learn how to ice skate, you have 2 alternatives. One, you can pay $300 to enroll your child at a private rink in the city (usually at times that are tough for 2 working parents to accommodate), or you can try and get into the Chicago Parks District program that will have 2 sessions a week.  I am not exaggerating when I say that the slots fill up literally in 20 seconds.  You have to be on your computer and ready to hit enter in order to get into the programs.  And if you try and call to sign up for the class, they will laugh at you.

Needless to say our children needed to learn some basic skills in order to survive on the Middle Coast (and in the city).   At the same time we wanted to get out of the urban setting to enjoy the simpler life.  Then a light bulb went on:  “why not have the kids take lessons up here?”.  It sounded crazier than it really was.  We figured that we would already be coming up on Friday nights and that Saturday mornings were usually spent hanging out at home relaxing. 

When you actually think about it, in the city the kids usually see their fellow classmates only during classes anyways.  And the classes are usually much cheaper than Chicago.  So if you couldn’t make it up one weekend, the hit to the pocket book wasn’t as severe.  

We have actually had our kids take swim lessons at the Benton Harbor YMCA a couple of times.  It is easy to sign up.  The lessons are early in the morning, so your whole day is not shot.  The instructors are very enthusiastic and really get to know the kids.

So if you claim part-time residence on the Middle Coast and have kids that need to be involved in classes, try doing them up here.  The resources are excellent and it is much easier to get into them things than it is in the city.

As much as I complained in my previous post that another restaurant in St Joseph had copied a popular restaurant in Chicago and the Midwest, Sophia’s is your typical greasy spoon restaurant that the city people love to frequent on a Saturday/Sunday morning after a long night of “overindulgence”.  Believe me, I have frequented enough of these places in Chicago to qualify as a probable expert in this area of cuisine, and they will all have their staple items on the menu (i.e. pancakes, Greek omelets, reubens, etc).  But each restaurant will at least have a slight variation on each entree.

Sophia’s is a breakfast place.  Great pancakes.  Frittatas are outstanding and the portions are hearty.  The wait staff is your typical diner folk (personable, but know that they can’t stop and talk too much or the big machine will come to a halt).  There is usually a line on Saturday and Sunday.  But they get them in and out so quick that it is usually not long.  If you are spending a week up on the lower left middle coast and are burned out on the quaint little restaurants that dot the area, take a morning and head to this establishment (also just opened a location in Michigan City, IN).  Get a good meal at a reasonable price.  Definite comfort food that Chicagoans are used to having in their normal weekly diets.