Fun at the beach day.

It was a 15 hour beach day. Our festival fireworks held at the lake are always a week after the 4th. And for being a relatively small area, 30,000 people makes for quite a crowd. But a fun loving slap happy mob out to enjoy the festivities.

We had our 30' X 30' area next to the water roped off by 8am. It's OK to "claim your territory", otherwise people will be sitting on your lap, and there's no room for your own group to sit together.

 Still lots of room for a few thousand more. They closed the main parking lot at noon because there was already too many people. When auxillary parking filled up by 6pm, they shut down the roads. It was now a 1/2 mile walk to get to the beach, and people kept coming.

It was a good water day, with small gentle waves breaking right on the shallow sandbar. Excellent for those little kids to enjoy some great wave hopping.

The GoodYear blimp made a surprise flyover. Too bad they couldn't drop some inner tubes for water fun.

Other people had something else on their mind. We never heard the answer(?)

Minute by minute the beach began to fill up.

The old beach trick to watch fireworks is to hollow out a place in the sand and lay in your blanket, like a recliner looking up.

The setting sun across Lake Michigan creates it own display on the horizon. By the silhouettes you can tell that space has become limited.

Anticipation and waiting was rewarded when the 30 minute fireworks show started promptly at 9pm. I don't do photos. Fireworks are not static, still images. You have to witness them in person to see the entire skyrocket explode in color, smell the smoke, and feel that boom in your gut.

With the monumental traffic jam afterwards, its best to wait an hour for the vehicles to clear out. But a friend had car trouble. So someone loaded up all his beach party JUNK (ha), and my already filled compact car was volunteered to stuff in 6 still active kids and one adult for a ride home. By 11pm the beach day was over.

Although the wrong day with thousands of people running every which way, it was pure luck that I built a new 12 hour sundial with nobody knocking it over. I've never had one from 8am-8pm. All silly things for a day at the beach.

Thanks for stopping by on our busiest day of the year.