Just South of Ludington – July 30, 2015 |

That perfect Michigan weather we have been hearing about has finally arrived. The high temperature was 78 degrees with sunny skies and nice cool breeze. What a beautiful day to explore the area south of Ludington.

First stop was a small coastal town called Shelby and the Shelby Gem Factory.

With nothing to go by but a name on a list; not even an address to put into the GPS, we set off looking for this place. It turned out to be hard to find but interesting to see and fun. The owner actually makes gems out of crystals and chemistry that goes beyond my understanding and then cuts and facets them like real gems and mounts them in 14k gold and platinum jewelry. The gems are actually flawless and make beautiful pieces of jewelry.

While we were there, they offered to clean my wedding ring but noticed that one of the prongs holding my diamond was missing. This had originally happened many years ago and we had it repaired but the repair obviously did not hold. They said their jeweler could fix it for $15.00 right then and asked if we wanted to have it done. My first thought was here is where they really get their diamonds by switching out my diamond for a synthetic stone so I did not agree. Then she offered to let me watch the jeweler as he did the repair and we agreed it would be good to do rather than take the chance of the stone falling out. The jeweler introduced himself as Lauro and was a delight to watch and listen to. He had a philosophy on everything and expressed it while working on the ring.Lauro and MG in his workshop

From Shelby we traveled to Pentwater for lunch.

Lunch on Thursday 7/30 right on Lake Pentwater

This entire area on the coast seems to be an endless collection of small towns with vibrant summer communities. Years ago when the communities were started, the primary industry was lumber and the trees were over cut leaving nothing to hold the sand. The sandy beaches and dunes were the results. We discovered there are many jeep rides through the dunes all along this coast as well as beaches filled with sunbathers. The water temperatures are not that high so the number of people in the water is much less than you see in Florida. We saw one woman standing in knee high water with her arms folded across her chest like she was cold and I bet she was.

Pentwater is a small lake connected to Lake Michigan by a channel. Some houses along the channel walkway are beautifully landscaped and just beg you to take their picture.

Channel from Lake Pentwater to Lake Michigan

There was also the Little Sable Point Lighthouse and we read that the water between the Big and Little Sable Points was the most destructive during early shipping and resulted in many ship wrecks. The lighthouse was originally built in red brick but the ship captains complained it was hard to see it because of the trees. The lighthouse was painted white, but when they refurbished the structure they took it back to its original brick.