We planned to finally hit Petoskey State Park with the entire group, and it was the perfect morning to do so.
Jumping the dunes at PSP
I was a bit behind the group because I changed camera lenses before leaving the parking lot, so I arrived a the bottom of the dune to find this classic American scene:
Three generations of flip flops, plus the Starbucks cup. What’s more American than that? We all climbed the big dune and then the girls began running down.
Aly leads off the jumps
Flying Grandpa
Now things get interesting
This interpretation of the photos did not happen until we reviewed them later this evening, but please read the captions of this group of photos with everyone speaking in a bad fake German accent.
The student becomes the teacher
Down to the beach
Though the water was a bit warmer than in Charlevoix the day before, it was still bitter – nearly to the cold level that knocks the air out of your chest. Aly and Devin were the first to brave the water, joined before long by me, Seth, and Emmy.
Leah started doing some hilarious tribal dance she and Taylor had concocted (perhaps inspired by the Vogel boys’ mountain stomping).
The Vorn and Rachel decided we should take a picture of Seth, Devin and I tossing the girls in the air. I could barely lift mine out of the water:
Devin then decided to dig a hole big enough to fit Aly in, invited her in, and then proceeded to bury her, before topping off her head:
She did eventually break out, but it took some struggling on her part. I then captured a few pictures that unfairly depict Devin as a texting addict:
Those were taken several minutes apart, by the way. Speaking of unfair depictions, here’s a Father of the Year picture of Seth:
Back to the other lake
We made the grueling 90-second drive back to the condo, ate some lunch, and then headed down to “our” beach. We made our most serious attempt at catching minnows, with Aly constructing a “huge” (her word) “tide pool” (again) that we tried to route the minnows into, where a chunk of hot dog was waiting as bait. No dice. We also through a very lightweight kids’ frisbee around, but the wind kept flipping it over, so we had very few successful throw-and-catch combos.
Because two lakes aren’t enough
The whole group walked the trail to the indoor pool, where we once again had the place to ourselves. Devin played the part of the ray in Finding Nemo, pulling all the girls around:
We then orchestrated a masterful Family Cannonball picture:
You have to love Vorn’s enthusiasm, but don’t be fooled into thinking that she’s jumping higher than Devin – he’s still on the way up, as evidenced here:
The girls then had their own cannonball picture:
After that, we headed back and cleaned up for dinner, which finally came from Thai Orchid (in addition to being closed on Saturday because of the A/C problem, they were closed on Sunday), which was quite tasty and also made for great leftover breakfast the next morning while we packed up for home.
