Friday August 15, 2008

Friday August 15—Day 47— South Haven, MI to Grand Haven, MI—48 miles.

Day 5: We left the school early as it was a shorter day. We had some SAG stops along the way, including a stop at the Graafschap CRC in Holland MI. This is one of three Christian Reformed Churches in North America and has a museum in the basement of the church which catalogues the history of the early church and settlers. From there we left and worked our way through Holland where we met up with Len’s family on a street corner. His wife, son and daughter were there and they were going to take a brief detour to visit Len’s son in law who worked just down the street. Sheryl, Karen and I continued on as Bob and Lisa had taken a detour and stopped to say hi to a former pastor who was in the area. Christeena Neinhuis joined with us just on the way out of town and we continued out towards Grand Haven.

On the way we rode past a sign which said “Lodeso loves Pete”. I snapped a picture on the fly and wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. When we arrived at our next SAG stop, Julie, we were talking about the sign and wondering what it meant, where Lodeso was. Apparently, her husband’s (Pete’s) coworkers were waiting at the corner for him to ride by. She had heard that they would be there and she had instructed him that morning that she couldn’t tell him why, but he was not allowed to deviate from his route to see other people in the area (he had planned to cycle around a bit to see a bunch of friends and others in the area) I will be emailing a copy of the photo to them as it turned out readable even though I took it on the fly.

When we arrived in Grand Haven, we had reached camp before the gear truck. We waited,

and when it arrived, it was unloaded and we started putting our tents up and creating our virtual tent city. I tried to blog at the conference grounds and wasn’t able to connect to the internet once again, the story of the tour.

Supper was provided by Christian Reformed World Missions, CRWM, and was phenomenal. Steak, salad, rolls, and great chocolate brownies were the fare and this was a great meal which allowed our kitchen crew to have some time off.

As Grand Rapids was also a turnaround city, we had a good-bye service for those who were leaving followed by communion. Sheryl Taylor in our riding group was leaving and going back to Iowa so she was able to say a brief goodbye to all of us as well. The temperature started to drop during dinner, maybe because we were on the lake and warm clothes were in order for the first time. As I am a glutton for sunsets, and we were on Lake Michigan, I had to snap a few pictures. I tried to keep my camera in one spot (a support on a wooden staircase) but it moved a little as people walked down the stairs to the beach. Here are a few pics that I caught.