July 14 Another long walk

Friday:  I had intended to get up this morning just before sunrise--because morning light is so easy to photograph; but I stayed up way too late last night chatting with Julie, Christie, and Jen. We had such a nice talk together!

Later in the morning, I mentioned taking a long walk--south again--to the "point" to see what is around it! Christy, who LIVES here and knows this beach well, enthusiastically agreed to walk with me! However, she informed me that a little bit short of the "point" there is a small river/creek that flows out to Lake Michigan. Sometimes the river runs deep, but most of the time it is not too deep to cross. Anyway, Julie, Jen, Christy and I set out on our walk. We weren't totally sure how far south we would get, and that was okay because we just enjoy talking while we are walking. Here are some pictures of our walk:

There were WAVES today! Yes! I love waves. These are not terribly big waves, but they sure sounded amazing. Isn't that a great sound? Waves crashing along rocks and sand--it's the best.

This monarch followed us around for quite awhile, flittering in and out, over and under. I tried to get a good shot of her in flight--but even after manipulating these shots with my photo program, I am not very happy with them. 

Here is Jen catching our monarch while it was resting ... she showed me her pictures of it which were 100x better than the ones I took. 

I walked back to where she was and caught it for a brief second before it took off again.

What a wonderful beach on which to walk! No crowds!

We finally reached the pier that borders the little creek ...

We all thought this was quite an unusual color for a pier ...

Here is the little creek ... it's deeper than it looks!

We did find a place to cross it--none of us were wearing bathing suits, so our capris/shorts got kind of wet, but not too bad.

The picture below shows how far away the point STILL IS, even after crossing the creek. By this time, we had been walking for more than an hour and all of us needed to use a facility ... so we decided to end our exploring right here, turn around, and head back to the cottage.

What a gorgeous place!

Christy prepared us an oriental salad and fruit for lunch which we didn't eat until nearly 2:00 in the afternoon due to our long walk. Afterwards, we just hung around and visited for awhile before one-by-one we went our separate ways back home to Grand Rapids.

I will say ... if I ever lived at this place, no one would EVER be able to drag me away from it. They would have to resign themselves to burying me right here. 

I feel absolutely REFRESHED. Thank you, Lord.