Here we are in Michigan this year. Pentwater Michigan to be exact. We are about 1 1/2 hours from our home by Grand Rapids so we will be able to see family and friends. We are starting our 7th year of wandering the country and working at campgrounds so we thought it would be nice to wander on home for awhile. We are at Whispering Surf Campground. It's a nice family campground with trees and fire pits and a beach on Bass Lake and a short walk to the beaches on Lake Michigan.
Whispering Surf started as Camp Morrison in 1913. It has had only two previous owners until this year. Let me introduce Jane and Andy Hathaway. They are the third owners of the camp. They thought it would be fun to own a campground and started looking. They found Whispering Surf and fell in love with it and it's history and the area. They closed on it the first of 2017, sold everything and moved here from Pennsylvania. They have been working on some upgrades and cleanup and getting ready ever since.
The first thing you see is the office upon entering the park. if you look to the right you will see us. We have a very nice site with trees some grass and we even have a deck. The owners are great to work with. The other work camper couple is Dan and LuAnn and they have been here for the last three years as on-site managers. They have been a big help to Jane and Andy as they are new to owning a campground.
The campground has a lot of history to it as I said before. This is the Lodge...it was opened in 1921 and was used to serve meals to the guest and also for dances and other gatherings. Now days it is used as a gathering place for the campers. It has a pool table, a foose ball table, a ping pong table and an exchange library. It has a nice sitting area to get away and just read a book. In the early years guest stayed in tents and cooked over an open fire. At that time the only way to get here was by ferry boat from Chicago where most of the guest came from, or by train on the Pere Marquette Railway.
This is the lower campground. These are seasonal sites. We have 85 sites. Most are full hook up sites with a few tent sites. About half the sites are seasonal; some of them have been here for many years. As usual everyone likes Holly but the jury is still out on me. I'm not worried though, the vote goes my way or no more trash pick up or wood delivery.
This view is looking the other way in the lower campground. On Memorial Day weekend we were full. We were very busy escorting campers to their sites and helping to get them parked and delivering firewood. As usual it seems like they all showed up at the same time on Friday night but we were ready and everything ran like a finely tuned machine. Mostly that is, we did have a couple hiccups but nothing serious.
We are not right on Bass Lake but it is a short walk over the bridge and to our private beach. It is a nice sandy beach and swim area. There is a nice dock and we hear the fishing is great. We haven't been out yet but it won't be long. We do rent canoes and kayaks so we will have to give one of the canoes a work out.
There is a small play ground with a pirate ship. This is a great family campground. Close to Pentwater which is a nice little tourist town and 15 miles south of Ludington. There are also two cottages that have not been used for years and Jane has turned them into very nice little two and three bedroom cottages. This is one of them and the other one should be ready in a couple of weeks.
On Memorial Day Andy and I went down to the beach and one of the campers asked if we were going to put in the swim dock. Not in the day's plan, but she said she would go out in the water with Andy and help get it out to the anchor in the lake. I thought it was a great idea (Marv is going to stay dry) and Andy took it as a challenge. Well we got it off the beach and in the water; they floated it out in deeper water and put the ladder on; then they swam it out to the milk jug on the end of the chain and the fun began. All the wood had swelled up and made things impossible to fit right.
By the time they got the ladder on and pushed out to the anchor point they had been in the water a long time and it was cold water. Neither one of them had ever done this before and they couldn't figure out how to hook it up to the anchor. They then pushed it back in until they could get the ladder touching bottom to hold it until we could figure out how to get it hooked up. After talking to them I figured out what was needed. #1 a pry bar. #2 a hammer. #3 a wood chisel. #4 Marv getting wet. Turns out that while we were talking Andy's helper disappeared.
Yup, the water was cold. Really cold but they had been in the water a lot longer then I would be so off we went. With the right tools we had it done in no time and had a bunch of happy campers. These are Andy's helpers and I say thank you to them as they did the hard work and I didn't have to spend as much time in that cold lake.
Those of you that have been with us from the start might recognize this lighthouse. This is the North Breakwater Light in Ludington. This is where our adventures started six years ago. This is also what I wrote about in the first post of our blog that you are reading. On this day the lake level is so high the breakwater is almost all under water. If you go back to our first post you can tell how much higher the lake level is.
This is an artist rendering of what the Little Sable Point Lighthouse used to look like. Today only the tower remains. The rest of the buildings were in such disrepair that they were just torn down. The plan is to rebuild them some day and make it a nice tourist draw in Mears which is just south of us. It is 107 feet tall and if your adventurous you can climb the 139 steps for a great view. It has a third order Fresnel lens which you can see in the picture below. A first order lens is the largest so this is a very large lens. The other lights we have been docents at have had fourth order lens. This is a beautiful light tower due to the masonry brick work that was done when it was built in 1874. It is open to the public in the summer and you can climb to the top for a small fee that helps with upkeep. So if you're in the area, stop over and enjoy some of the Great Lakes' history.
That's all for now. It's nice to be back home for a while. Been nice to see family and visit friends. We have already had lots of company but if we are here and not working we always enjoy visiting. Remember, just like a light house, until next month, we'll keep a light on for you.
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