Last summer we took a short family vacation to Grand Rapids Michigan. Normally when you think of vacationing in Michigan, you think of Traverse City or Mackinac Island. I was afraid they would be crowded in the middle of the summer, so I chose Grand Rapids instead. We went on VRBO and rented a very nice house for three days.
As soon as we got there, we went to Frederik Meijer gardens. We should have left home sooner, but we only had about two hours there. You could easily spend a half a day there. One of my favorite parts of the gardens was the Japanese garden. It was beautiful!
Another place I really liked there was the waterfal and koi pond. Even though it was man made, it was still a very relaxing place to sit and enjoy the sound of the waterfall. Of course if you go there, you have to see the statue of the giant horse. It was very well done. I would definitely recommend a visit to Frederik Meijer gardens!
That evening after we left the gardens, we enjoyed a ride on the Grand Lady. It’s a riverboat in Grand Rapids. The best thing about it was that it was just a very relaxing ride up the river and great to unwind before we went back to our house for the night. Before we got home we were hungry so we got pizza at Brick Road pizza on Wealthy St. It was great! Unfortunately, they closed on Jan. 29th of this year.
The next morning we drove over an hour to go for a Dune ride with Mac Wood’s dune rides in Sillver Lake. They were busy, but we put our name in and went to eat at the drive in. It was OK food but we thought it was quite expensive for a drive in. Then we went on the Dune Ride. They had a step to help Marty get into the buggy. We stopped by the lake and got some crazy photo’s of my son and his wife. Our driver was great and had a great sense of humor.
We got to a spot on a high dune that was so steep, you couldn’t see the bottom. The driver stopped at the very peak. It was a little scary and Martha made a comment about it being scary. The driver said, “Yeah, I get so scared that I close my eyes on the way down.”
That afternoon, we back to Grand Haven. I wanted to rent a speed boat, but those had to be reserved a head of time, so we went to the beach. I’m not much of a beach person so I went for a walk and saw a lot of million dollar homes along the lake.
Martha and the kids stayed at the beach. They had a handicapped beach buggy, that looked cool, but didn’t push very well in the sand. It still was a fun afternoon.
That evening after dark, they had a fountain and light show at Grand Haven. I didn’t get any good pictures, but we really enjoyed it as we ate ice cream cones and sat and watched the show.
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