Mt. Pleasant, MI

During the last school year Billy had the opportunity to orchestrate a Senior Design Project for his work with some college students at CMU in Mt. Pleasant.  Though the project has concluded, during his many visits he found a few things in Mt. Pleasant that he thought I might like to see.  Since Mt. Pleasant is just down the road from Midland, we headed there after our visit to Dow Gardens.

Our destination was a cute little café in downtown, but since they were closing in 15 minutes we ordered our food to go and ate it at a nearby park.

The first park we tried had a baseball tournament in session, so it was absolutely packed, with no parking or tables available.  We ended up at Nelson Park, which didn't have a playground, but the kids managed to find things to do. = )

Selfies on a rock. 

More pictures on a rock.

Pretending to read on a bench.

Rinsing their sandy hands in the river.

Exploring.

And during our exploring, we found that the trail led to another park, one with a playground!  This park had a softball tournament in session, but we were already parked and fed, so they played!

On our way back to the car they followed a chipmunk who "disappeared."

The rotary club bridge was pretty cool.

View from the bridge.

I'm hoping that maybe Billy and I can go back and stay overnight for my birthday this year.  It has so many cool things that weren't open after 5 on a weekend!

later days

Dow Gardens

Dow Gardens in Midland is now the furthest north I've been in Michigan.  Billy still doesn't think that it qualifies as "going up north" and I've not asked any locals yet.  This is what most of our trip looked like:

I was unprepared for how large these gardens were.  Since we had made the trip for the canopy walk, we didn't do much exploring.  Origami was present throughout the park, but I never found any signs that explained way.

There were a few weddings going on in another area, I'm sure it is picturesque, and maybe one day we will go back to see it again.

"Everyone sit on the bench!" "It's too hot!"

The rose garden smelled amazing!  They had all sorts of varieties and hybrids.  My favorite was the Yankee Doodle. = )

We had fun playing on our trip to the canopy walk:

We made it!

The nets were like giant hammocks!

The next feature we enjoyed was the glass floor vista.

The final point of interest was the almond house.  They had one that connected via the path and one that had a rope bridges.

The bridge was fairly congested, since it was a single bridge for both directions.  There were lots of people visiting while we were there, but it wasn't too bad.

They wanted to know what was in the locked seats.

Our final stop was the playground.  It was in the mid-80s, with a nice warm sun, so we were downing the water.

When we arrived at the playground, we found that it had a water park element too.  Very shallow water, but oh so fun for my crew!  Even I waded in the water.  The ground was h-o-t, and the water must have been pumped straight from lake Huron, because it was c-o-l-d.  On a slightly cooler day it would not have been fun, but it was a pleasant contrast to the ground. = )

Look, the color changes!

How?

When the water ran low, we decided to go.  Since we weren't part of a stream of people at the pump house this time, I managed a picture of my crew.  = )

We took the shorter, less scenic walk back to the car, but it still had some attractions.

We may go back again some day, the playground was really fun.  It's a bit of a drive just for a playground though.  Maybe someday we can do family pictures in the gardens.  That might justify another trip. = )

later days