Friday, September 4th

Dave received an email from his boss, letting him know that he could finish early today to get a jump on the holiday w/e – fantastic! We worked and schooled in the morning, then spent an hour after lunch, helping the children complete their Junior FIRE Ranger booklets. These were great, not overly challenging, do-able in a short space of time and complete a requirement for fire safety required by our school district!

We made a stop at the Visitor’s Center to receive the Fire Ranger patches and play in the interactive children’s area. This was an awesome room: many stuffed animals relevant to the area, clothes from the early 1900’s that they could dress up in, computer games, brass rubbings, books, puzzles, a puppet show area with animals you’d find in the National Lakeshore, among other things. We thought this would be a quick stop to watch the informative 10 minute dvd, however we ended up staying for almost 2 hours, chatting for quite some time with Ranger Julie. The kids had to interview a Ranger for their booklets anyway and she really shared some great and interesting information.

We had promised the children a trip to the beach, there were many choices, we opted for Porter Beach as that was closest. Lake Michigan is not quite as clear here, compared to how it was further north, however the kids were not deterred, quickly putting their suits on, despite a breeze. As we were looking for shells and rocks, a lady came over to share her finds and chat with us about the area. She was looking for croinoids and gave us a few that she’d found, they’re really cool and certainly would’ve been hard to find by ourselves. She told us that on a clear day, you can get a great view of Chicago across the lake. Today was hazy, far from clear and Chicago was totally invisible!