Hitting Our Favorite Beach

Parking: $6
Picnic Lunch: $12
Tube of Sunscreen: $8

Spending a sunny afternoon playing on a beach on
Michigan’s West Coast: Priceless


So I can already cross off number 12 on my list of Summer Must-Dos – the beach has been hit!

Because it promised to be a perfect July afternoon, we loaded up the boogie boards, beach towels, folding chairs and a cooler and headed to, what is so far, our family’s favorite beach, Kirk Park, part of the Ottawa County Parks system. We love the natural setting this beach offers – boasting more than 68 acres of sandy beach, high bluffs and wooded dunes – it provides the feeling of truly “getting away from it all”, if only for a few hours. We ate a picnic lunch, played in the awesome waves, buried kids in the sand and basked in the sun. As promised, a perfect July afternoon.

There are 18 public beaches between just north of Muskegon to just south of Douglas. Because each one offers its own unique characteristic – from people watching to dune climbing to snapping photos of lighthouses – one of them is sure to become your favorite. To learn more about what makes certain beaches special, visit http://grandrapidsshopping.mlive.com/SS/Page.aspx?sstarg=&facing=false&secid=38200&pagenum=25.