Up the coast to Whitehall and Silver Lake

Thursday, May 25 -- Saugatuck to Whitehall (57 miles) -- then by land to Silver Lake

We started the day nervous about what Lake Michigan would be like after the front passing through and the NOAA forecast calling for 1-3’ waves. Our goal was to get to Pentwater, about 80 miles up the coast, so that we could visit friends from our FL condo -- Ed and Tami -- who have a summer cottage on Silver Lake. The day was sunny and clear, but only in the low 60s, so we decided to ride in the cabin.

On the way out the Kalamazoo River we passed a place where they rent out beautiful little 50s vintage boats and a paddle wheel excursion boat full of school kids.

 Lake Michigan turned out to be very calm when we exited the Kalamazoo River about 11am, and we had a calm, quiet run all the way up to Muskegon. We were feeling good about making it to Pentwater by late afternoon, then suddenly within the space of just a few minutes we had a light chop with whitecaps coming out of the north, and within five minutes that had turned into a moderate chop, and in another five minutes a heavy chop and then steady two-footers. It was remarkable how fast the water changed. NOAA had predicted east winds “backing” to the north, and that’s what we must have encountered. Anyhow, we quickly decided that we were not going to slug out these waves for another three hours and would head instead into White Lake, only an hour away. This turned out to be of little inconvenience to our friends and saved us a lot of grief. They met us at the Crosswinds Marina in Whitehall at the east end of White Lake and we were only half an hour drive from their cottage.

Noteworthy sights while running up the coast were the Big Red light house at the entrance to Holland Harbor, a group of swans paddling around together about ¼ mile offshore who took off as we approached, and the two red lighthouses on the pier at Grand Haven.

The nice thing about staying at Whitehall is that John has family connections in the area and has visited here a few times before. The parents of his maternal grandfather (Clement Reeves) had a cottage in a community on the big lake between White and Duck Lakes called Michillinda back in the early 1900s. Clem's family would take the ferry from Chicago to Whitehall at the start of summer and stay until school started in the fall, with his father commuting back and forth by ferry to his job in Chicago on the weekends. There are still many Victorian-era cottages in the community, but as the beach eroded they had to move the front row of cottages back and then add rip-rap to stabilize the cliff. It looked a lot different when John visited as a kid because the lake levels were much lower in the mid-60s. The beach was at least a couple hundred feet wide then. 

Clem's niece and nephew had summer places in the area up until recently. Bill's was on White Lake and Julie's was on the big lake. John took his mother up to see her cousins a couple times in the last ten years or so. We think this is Julie's place, just down the coast a bit from Michillinda. We didn't try to find Bill's place.

  

Enough family history. On to Ed and Tami's place on Silver Lake. They built a beautiful big cottage on the NW corner of the lake nine years ago on the lot where Ed's parents had a cabin. (A very typical cottage story. They tend to run in families.) Their view over the lake is stunning. The sand dunes to the right (south and west) extend about a mile all the way from Silver Lake to Lake Michigan and are almost four miles long. The dunes were caused by clear-cut logging in the 1870s that was driven by the lumber boom resulting from the Great Fire in Chicago. The dunes are now a state park. 

The dunes are always moving. Their neighbor at the end of the street has to haul tens of thousands of cubic yards of sand off his property every year to keep it clear. The state wouldn't do it (even though it is, or was, their sand) so he got a mining permit and sells what he has hauled out. The state does, however, clear the sand from the dead-end turnaround at the end of the street. 

 

After dinner at Ed and Tami's we drove over to the south side of the lake to see his brother Bill's cottage, which is also lovely, and then go watch the sunset from the Little Sable Point Lighthouse. They did some really nice brickwork when they built this lighthouse out in the middle of nowhere back in 1874.