Saturday August 21, 2021.
Temp: 87/73. Humidity: 66/81 %, Top Wind: SW10 mph, Precip: none- Another Sunny HOT Day, Miles Traveled: 15-ish on the bikes
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Today’s adventure was to ride to town and see what there is to see in Holland. Because actually, the marina is located in Macatawa. 🤷♀️ It’s about five miles from the marina, mostly flat on bike lanes or sidewalks, and all along the lake were beautiful homes. It wasn’t a bad ride! First stop in town was the farmer’s market. There was soooo much fresh produce that I had to contain myself. I really wanted to buy some stuff, but it would have had to jostle along and cook in Speedy’s saddlebags, so I didn’t buy anything. Everything was so delicious looking and full of color!
Most vendors really were ‘farmers’ with produce which sometimes is unusual at a farmer’s market. I don’t think there was any jewelry or crafts, just lots of peaches and tomatos, honey and flowers, and a couple of bakeries.
As we strolled through town, Kenny loved this old brick building sign. Studebaker and Desoto? Since 1915. That’s been there awhile.
The Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte and “a band of Hollanders” founded the city of Holland on February 9, 1847. The Dutch have been here for a long time. It would be beautiful to see this place in the spring when the tulips are in bloom!!
There were a few really nice sculptures in town. I loved this one! I’m a little surprised that it is still here, given all the crazy controversies in this country about what should or should not be honored. I’m glad the American flag is still honored here!
Ah ha! One of our primary reasons for coming to town…. the New Holland Brewing Company. Their beers are distributed nationally and are well known for their Dragon’s Milk beers.
This was interesting…. the JCPenney Company built this building in the 1920’s. New Holland has been in it since 2002! I didn’t know the company had been around that long…. but then again, I’m really pretty new to the beer scene. 😉
Here are some of the Dragon’s Milk varieties. Between the two of us, we tried five of them. I didn’t care for the white one – it tasted too much like beer for me. 😜. Kenny tried to warn me. My favorite tends to be the peanut butter and chocolate stouts.
Check out all these dragons!
We learned a neat new Dutch word.
Gezellig (gheh-SELL-ick – where the G sounds like you’re trying to clear your throat) does not have an English equivalent. Literally, it means cozy, quaint, or nice, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness. I found these examples: An evening on the town with friends is gezellig, especially if you have dinner at a gezellig restaurant, see a good movie, and finish with a drink at a gezellige pub. Trying to entertain the inlaws-from-hell is definitely not gezellig. HA!
It was neat to see how they’ve kept some of the historical features of this old building. It was a very busy place, and they had a good menu of food. We ordered some pepperoni rolls. They were like a rolled up pepperoni pizza cut into slices like cinnamon rolls, then baked. Oh baby they were good, and I don’t even care for pepperoni! (yeah – I felt it later… burp!) 🤭
Out around town I snapped a few photos. This was cool – some kind of brick chimney for … I don’t know ?
The shop fronts are all really nice with lots of flowers everywhere.
Just more unique fronts.
The clock tower was built in 1892. This part is funny – The clock in the Tower Clock Building was built by John Raven, a 26-year-old jeweler from Hartford, Mich, so “men wouldn’t be late for work.” Apparently he wasn’t kidding about the reason for the clock: he sought donations from surrounding merchants and factories.
This was another really neat scupture in a little park right in the middle of town.
Woah – would you look at that? They have a “social district” that apparently allows drinks outside!
From town, we rode a bit to the northeast to a park with a Dutch Village and Windmill.
Unfortunately, both were behind fences which required an admission price to get in. It wasn’t THAT important, so I just took pictures from outside. I’ve read that the Dutch Village is cute and fun, with authentic costumed characters and shops and activities.
The windmill is the real thing. It is called DeZwaan, and had been built in Krommenie, Netherlands in 1761 as a grain mill set on a raised base to better capture the wind. Many of these monumental structures had suffered serious damage in World War II, and this one was very heavily damaged. The Dutch government finally agreed to sell it and allow it to be moved out of the country in 1964. DeZwaan is the only authentic Dutch windmill operating in the United States, grinding locally-grown wheat into flour, which you can purchase in the gift shop.
That was kind of disappointing that we would have to pay to go see the windmill. So then I wanted to go find the park with the giant Wizard of Oz plant book. Really!! On the way, we found ourselves passing through the campus of Hope College.
“We desire that every one of you lay hold of the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast”. Hebrews 6:11,18,19.
Neat old stone building. It is Graves Hall, built in 1894, and houses classrooms and an auditorium. Pretty fancy!
Hope College was chartered in 1866, just fifteen years after settlers from the Netherlands founded this town of Holland in Michigan. It is a private four-year Christian liberal arts college. “Spera in Deo” translates to “Hope in God”.
The Gothic style Dimnent Memorial Chapel (seems really large for a chapel!) was built in 1929. It is said that the Chapel has some of the most impressive stained glass windows in Michigan, and the glass was imported from France and Italy.
We found the park where the giant Wizard of Oz book made of plants was! And there was even a yellow brick road in front of it!
L.Frank Baum, the author of the story, vacationed in Macatawa at his family cottage, and it is thought that he most likley worked on the book while staying here. The book was published on May 17, 1900. He said “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure the children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retianed and hearaches and nightmares are left out.”. (I imagine he had no idea what Hollywood would do with those flying monkeys and how frightening they were?)
The park was just so beautiful with so many flowers and plants and water features. There were two different bridal parties here having pictures done. I was bummed that I didn’t find the life size bronze statues of the characters from the story. Later I read that they are actually across the street at the library! WHAT?! 😔 I looked all over for them…. but didn’t think I had to go somewhere else to find them! Dang! I guess maybe I should have followed the yellow brick road? I dunno!
It was so hot, and we were both feeling dehydrated and overheated, so we headed back out of town. 🥵
On the way back we stopped at a place that we saw on our way in…. the Tulip City Brewstillery!
They had a huge warehouse kind of space, with all kinds of games in one room. They didn’t have their own food, but there was a food truck outside. We each had a beverage and a couple glasses of water, then headed back home.
Along the way were so many beautiful homes. I couldn’t stop and take pictures of all of them while riding, but I did stop a couple of times.
We got home and just collapsed in the air conditioning and worked on cooling off. The sunset was really pretty, and tomorrow is going to be very windy with a small craft advisory out on the big lake. That’s why we planned to stay put here until Monday. We have reservations in St Joseph for Monday & Tuesday, but I’ve been trying to figure out if we should stop in a couple of places before that and adjust our dates, and then where and when should we go after that? I looked at future weather and tried to make a plan.
I finally threw in the towel and suggested that we just go to St Joseph on Monday and stay two nights as planned, then zip on over to Chicago on Wednesday. It’s 60 miles and that’ll get us off of Lake Michigan and I can quit trying to figure out where to go, how long to stay, when we can move, can I get reservations, and making my head hurt. And then actually, how about if we just go straight to Hammond, fuel up, stay there, then on Thursday take the CalSag waterway off the lake, rather than go up to Chicago to the Chicago River? We loved going through downtown Chicago last time, but we’re really just ready to get off of this lake. We’ve been dealing with Great Lakes weather systems and busy marinas for almost two months now. It can keep us prisoner any time and anywhere, and it is exhausting trying to make plans around the weather. Last time, we were stuck in Chicago for SIX DAYS, because the lake romped up huge waves crashing over the breakwater for several days! The plan sounded OK to the Captain, so I made an online reservation at Hammond Marina in Indiana for Wednesday. Whew! Decision made. Let’s hope it’s a good one.!!
Tomorrow will be a fun day. Our local brand new Gold Looper friends Rick & Rhonda from R&R are going to pick us up and take us to the nearby town of Saugatuck. We were going to stop there in the boat, but with the weather looking unstable toward the end of the week, we’re happy to go explore by land and skip it by boat. YAY!