Warren Dunes State Park

or otherwise titled… The kids vs the first dune!

We left our home and started driving east. Ray and I knew that the kids would never make it through a 6 1/2 hour drive with out stopping a longer stop to run off some energy, so we planned a little detour to the Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan.

We got there just after lunch and the park was packed! I guess we weren’t the only ones not grilling at home on the 4th of July! 😉

Noah wasn’t too sure about climbing the big sand hill… he’s not to fond of dirt and kept complaining about the sand on his hands and legs (boy would that change soon enough!!).

Both kids managed to make it to the top (with a little… or a lot… of help from Ray and me). Of course as soon as he was up at the top, Noah wanted to run back down… because everyone knows that’s the whole reason why you climb up the hill!!!

Both kids were worn out by the time we made it back to the car. Noah ran most of the way down and Abby had quite a bit of help,  but she ran part of the way too… and had a giant smile on her face the whole time!

Noah took it upon himself to be the keeper of the water bottle and was very intent on telling Abby and me when we were allowed to drink from it. If you notice the look on his face in the picture above, he was not happy that Abby was going to get a  drink when he had just said it was Mama’s turn!! 😉

As  you can see he quickly got over it and had fun telling us about the “big dune of Michigan”.

Abby… well she was just happy!

After leaving the Warren Dunes, we headed for Traverse City via the scenic route (aka not the highway). It was a nice drive, but long and I think all of us were happy to get out of the car once we made it to the hotel. We knew the fireworks were that night and looked up a good place for us to walk to that wasn’t too far from the hotel. We ended up walking to Bryant Park and found a comfortable spot in the sand.

(That is Abby’s new smile… like it?!?!)

Both kids were excited to see the fireworks, especially Noah, who had watched the local fireworks from our back porch the night before. It was a little weird for us that it was still light out at 10pm… we’re used to it being dark shortly after 9. I wasn’t sure how the kids would hold up, but they did great (we were even complemented on their good behavior at 11 pm by a stranger!!!)  and even enjoyed some ice cream with us from a little (but ever so busy) stand on the way back to the hotel.

Day 1 of our road trip was over and we fell exhausted into our beds… Noah with daddy and Abby with me 😉

{Just as a little side note… I’m on Google+ now and like it so far, so if you would like an invite just let me know!! =) }