Day 111 – 127; Sept 11 – 27. We are back! Having been off the boat for 2 weeks it’s a little strange being back on. Carol left on 9/11 to attend 2 days of meetings in Chicago then 2 days of meetings in Boston. Gary stayed behind in Holland, MI and did a deep clean of the boat while also managing to get in a few rounds of golf before meeting up with Carol at the beach house in North Myrtle Beach, SC on 9/16.
9/16 – 9/23 was our 8th annual beach week with friends from MD, NC, TN and CA. Needless to say a great time was had by all! 9/23 took us back to Chicago where we got to spend the weekend with Michael (son) and Kylie, taking in a Cubs Game at Wrigley field (a Gary bucket list item), enjoying a sunset architectural boat tour of Chicago and venturing out to Navy Pier for dinner and fireworks. It was a quick whirlwind weekend with Michael and Kylie, both leaving early Monday morning – Kylie headed back to work in Baltimore and Michael headed to Clemson to represent their company (RK&K) at a student job fair. Carol’s brother Mike swung through Chicago from Beaver Dam, WI to pick us up and joined us in Holland, MI for a couple days of touring before heading to see family in Grand Rapids, MI then returning to WI. Sound crazy? It was! 5 states in 2 weeks, but now we are back!
In some ways it was great to be on land doing some familiar things like our annual North Myrtle Beach (NMB) trip, but also strange having left “that life” behind for life on the boat 4+ months ago. It was great to see the Chitterlings, Steinwegs, Straders, Trews, and Gadds in NMB (sorry we all missed the Mattners this year, down with COVID) and so fun to explore Chicago with Michael and Kylie and Grand Haven & Holland, MI with Mike.
Now we are back, trying to figure out our journey from here (Holland) to Chicago and through the 3 currently closed locks on the Illinois River. Just this morning we received notice that our scheduled passage on 10/9 has been delayed by 5 days…..DANG! So we are regrouping and figuring out a new plan! All the looper boats are stacking up and slips are harder to find. Chicago is turning into a bit of a log jam.
Back to the last couple weeks – had a blast in NMB relaxing at Casablanca for the 8th year in a row with great friends. Everyone appreciated the “keep it simple” theme with much simpler dinner and lunch menus. Of course we left the place better than we found it with a cleaning frenzy by all and “Mr and Mrs MacGyver” (Bill and Kim) repairing toilets, light switches, car fans and more; there was even a trip to the dump with much of the stuff renters leave behind in the game room. We had several beautiful sunny day, sitting by the pool and the guys enjoying a couple rounds of golf. Those were followed by a couple cooler rainy days that made the hot tub seem even more perfect! This was our first year without Stryker and he was certainly missed!
Saturday, 9/23 took us to Chicago where we met up with Michael and Kylie. On the architectural boat tour, I took all these great pictures of the buildings in Chicago along the Chicago River but can’t for the life of me remember which is which now. After the cruise, we walked to the Navy Pier for a late dinner and fire works show. We were all pretty exhausted so Ubered back to the hotel – amazing what different prices we all got on our separate phones! Sunday, we went to the final Cubs home game, enjoying some great seats right behind home plate with access to the Carolina Club. It was fantastic and the Cubs even won!! After the game, we returned to the River Walk finding a small table across from the Merchandise Mart to watch the light show….okay – a little strange! Monday, Michael and Kylie were up and out very early to get back to work, but we were able to be a little lazy! Mike picked us up around 11:00 am and we headed out of town back to the boat in Michigan to meet up with his family for dinner.
Tuesday we played tourist in Grand Haven and Holland, MI. We walked Grand Haven’s main street, enjoyed their Tri-Cities Historical Museum and found a sandwich shop for lunch. We could imagine this as a very busy and bustling place in the summer, full of tourists and beach goers. Being off season, many of the shops and restaurants were closed. We ventured to Grand Haven State Park and walked the South Pier with it’s two lighthouses and lighted catwalk. From there we headed back toward Holland and really enjoyed Windmill Island Gardens where we toured the De Zwaan (The Swan) Windmill, America’s only authentic working Dutch windmill disassembled in the Netherlands and brought to the US.
When Holland, MI residents Willard Wichers and Carter Brown were looking for a way to pay homage to the city’s Dutch heritage, they began a project to bring a Dutch windmill to the United States. Many of the windmills had suffered serious damage in World War II and the Dutch government had placed a ban on the sale of windmills outside the Netherlands, protecting them as national monuments. Of the once 10,000 windmills in the Netherlands, only about 1000 remain. Wichers and his group were able to gain an exemption to the ban by selecting a heavily damaged mill known as De Zwaan that had been in operation in Vinkel Netherlands. De Zwaan had been built in Krommenie, Netherlands, in 1761 as a grain mill set on a raised base to capture the wind. It was moved to Vinkel in 1884 by a family named Van Schayk. De Zwaan was at the center of a controversy, with three local agencies unable to determine the future of the heavily damaged windmill. The Dutch government finally agreed to sell it to Wichers for $2800, making De Zwaan the last windmill to leave the Netherlands. De Zwaan was in rough shape. Like many windmills at that time, De Zwaan was riddled with bullet holes. Nazi forces regularly shot at windmills because the Dutch would use them to transmit messages to neighboring towns.
In October, 1964, De Zwaan’s 7000 pieces weighing 66,000 tons arrived aboard the Prins Willem van Oranje. It was unloaded at the Muskegon harbor and transported by truck to Windmill Island in Holland. One of the stipulations of the sale was that Dutch millwright Jan D. Medendorp would supervise its relocation. It took approximately 6 months to reconstruct the mill. The city erected a raised base 3 stories high rather than the mound of earth it had been set on in Vinkel so as to restore it to its original design when it stood in Krommenie and best capture the winds from Lake Michigan.
In April 1965, the 125-foot windmill was dedicated on Windmill Island, a 36-acre site reclaimed from a swamp on the eastern end of Lake Macatawa. When winds are favorable (15 to 20 mph from the west), De Zwaan’s 80-foot diameter blades are usually in motion grinding wheat or corn.
The island also has a four columns street organ, donated by the city of Amsterdam as a thank you to the US for its efforts in liberating the Netherlands at the end of WWII. The Four column organ was built in 1928 and still plays several classic Dutch tunes from a “book” that drives the pipes and drums. It now includes a motor, but the original hand crank is still there to blow air into the bellows. It reads books of music, similar to a player piano. The organ was featured in several Tulip Time parades, but eventually fell into disrepair before being preserved and added to the Gardens. You can listen to its beautiful music below.
Next stop…. South Haven or St. Joes….. slip permitting.
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