On July 12th, we returned from the Outer Banks, mowed the lawn, unpacked and repacked the car, and headed north to Michigan. Our first Michigan stop would be at Lake Mitchell, right outside of Cadillac. There we would stay with Kristen and see Shannon, Laura’s childhood friends going all the way back to elementary school.

On our last trip to Lake Mitchell, there were some traumatic experiences with kayaks and jet skis for McKenna and Laura respectively. McKenna in particular remains scarred by the experience of kayaking into water grasses that contained at least one confirmed small water snake.

With these prior boating experiences as a guide, we opted to play it safe by taking the pontoon boat, at low Laura-approved speeds, a short distance to a sandy area devoid of water snakes. As far as we knew.

While we were hanging out in the lake, Laura and Shannon began reminiscing about the truly awful things that they did when they were teenagers. All teenagers do stupid things, but the lack of forethought, compassion for parents, and common sense in a story involving Laura or Shannon usually ends with the listener asking the question, “How are you still alive?!” In one story, Shannon and Laura each drove their cars down an empty rode for some illicit before-school activities, with Shannon leaving her car running to get into Laura’s car. The police, noticing two cars on an otherwise abandoned rode, drove down the road to investigate, prompting Laura and Shannon to drive away in Laura’s car to evade them, leaving Shannon’s car behind, still running. The perplexed police, trying to figure out what kind of person would have left behind a perfectly functioning and running automobile, thought they could rule out a kidnapping because “there was no sign of a struggle.” Nevertheless, the police called Shannon’s home to let her mom know that she was missing. Hearing this story, the offspring of Laura and Shannon, who contrary to all that’s known of genetics and all that mankind understands about child-rearing, have grown up to respect law and order, were totally not amused by the story. Their disapproval led them to break with tradition, and they did not ask how Laura and Shannon were still alive.

In the kids’ defense, the story told on this day was fairly tame by Laura and Shannon standards. The gold standard of these shocking stories remains Laura’s trip to Mexico when she was in her 20’s, when Laura went to a random, unplanned location in Mexico with only one other female friend, using an outhouse in a scorpion-infested area, sleeping basically outside, while traveling with no water and insufficient money, leaving no contact information for relatives, and taking this picture with a Federale.

The next day, the plan was to head to Lake Michigan, which is about an hour west of Lake Mitchell. Kristen and her husband Matt knew of a sandy beach at the end of a short hike just south of Manistee. The last time we were in this area, we visited Manistee at a time when Lake Michigan looked like the ocean. This time, the weather was warmer and the water would be much calmer, so we planned a Lake Michigan swimming day.

The trail was free of crowds, which may have been because it was a Monday, or it may have been, as Matt pointed out, because Nurnberg Trail is autocorrected by search engines.

This autocorrect was especially meaningful for our family, because we have indeed hiked trails that became trials, like our experience on the Jordan Pond to the Bubbles Trail in Acadia National Park, an experience that has entered into family legend, becoming more epic with each of McKenna’s increasingly dramatic retellings.

The Nurnberg Trail was not a trial, even if that liar Google tells you it is. The trail is almost exactly a mile and a half, mostly through shady woods, and it opens up at the Nordhouse Dunes, offering a sandy water view that looks more like something you would see at an ocean than lake.

The views were spectacular, with the water close to the shore taking on the turquoise color that we have seen in glacier-fed lakes in Montana and Canada.

Having to walk 1.5 miles hauling beach chairs raised the degree of difficulty in reaching the beach just enough that the beaches were not at all crowded, and we were able to claim a spot pretty close to where the hiking trail opened to Lake Michigan. The water was fairly warm, around 70 degrees, and crystal clear near the shore.

The water was warm enough that almost everyone went underwater at some point. Shockingly, Laura, who historically would go in water of almost any temperature, was the only outlier.

It was a clear, warm day. On the beach, the only real threat was that we might get a bit burnt. Fortunately, we had a champion of sun-safety ready to guide us all in coping with dangerous ultraviolet radiation.

After a few hours of responsible sun exposure on the beach, it was time to head back.