The Thumb

 I love how everything in Michigan relates to the layout of the "mitten". A few days before Labor Day weekend we met Jason's parents in the Thumb for a camping trip. We stayed in Caseville, just to the west of the tip, which is Port Austin. It is the only place in the US where you can see the sunrise and set over a huge body of water. We were on Saginaw Bay, which is in Lake Huron. We saw the sunset the first night we were there, in case the weather got in the way on the other nights, which it did!

Sunset 

The sunrise from where we were at was somewhat blocked by a little jut of land. It's better from Port Austin, right at the tip, but we got a pretty good view. 

Sunrise

Facing west.

Another cool thing about the area is that there is a dark preserve there, where you can see the night sky without other outside lights getting in the way. It was amazing, except for that there was a full moon that night, so that did make it harder to view the stars. Jason showed us all the constellations on an app, so we could compare it with the night sky. We also saw a satellite, Saturn, and Jupiter. When we realized that the reason we couldn't see as much as we thought was because of the rising full moon, we went to a better viewing spot for the moon and found some telescopes there that we could use. It was amazing! We could see craters and mountains on the moon! The pictures of everything weren't great, sorry to say we can't share it with you.

Rising moon

Moon with a star above it.

Besides really enjoying the sky, we enjoyed the very cold lake water, the beautiful towns and farmland (they grow sugar beets and corn there), the Japenese gardens in Saginaw, and the ice cream! We had to adjust some things for the weather. We got some thunderstorms, very high winds, and some crazy waves as a result of both. Luckily, the morning we went to the beach, it was calm and we left as it started to get rough. It turned out that the high winds were expected all week. We were going to kayak out to Turnip Rock, a 7 mile ride out to a rock in Lake Huron, and back, but the rental place had to cancel everything that week because of the high winds and waves. We were disappointed, but we'll definitely do it next year because the Thumb is my new favorite place and only 2 1/2 hours away from our home!

Before the winds and waves picked up and nobody was there!

The campground was nice and not busy. The kids had fun exploring it.

We found frogs.

They were very helpful setting up. Austin's injury was healing, slowly. He got it from the camper in our driveway. Skinned his entire shin and knee on the metal bumper. It was extremely painful to look at, especially seeing him writhe with pain!

My view from my run.

Japanese gardens.

Karissa loves all things Japanese!

In Saginaw, there were these copper statutes, painted to look real life, all through the town. Some were playing checkers, some were selling things, some just "walking" around.

Rose gardens.

Thunderstorm rolling in.

We got some ice cream on two different days. 

You can't see how big this is, but the single scoops from this places were the biggest I've ever seen!!

Port Austin

After we returned home, we learned that people couldn't go out on this dock, or even in any of the Great Lakes, over Labor Day weekend, to swim or in their boats because the waves and winds were so bad. What did you expect from 2020??

After we returned, we redressed Austin's leg, again. I finally managed to take a picture of it, 11 days later. If you want to see the real gory picture of when he first got his injury, you'll have to contact Jason!

We picked raspberries with Gramms and Abuelo and got cider and donuts on their final day here. It was such a fun visit with them!!