Travelin'

For our anniversary, last weekend Dave and I headed out to the west coast (of Michigan....). I love lake Michigan this time of year - colorful trees, crisp air, usually good temperatures and all the towns are far less crowded than the summer. We spent the weekend hanging out in Holland, Saugatuck and Grand Rapids, which are all kind of in the general area of right here:

The weather was a bit cold and cloudy, but overall still really great. Holland and Saugatuck were their usual adorable, kitchy, quaint selves. I had never spent much time in Grand Rapids.... but it was kind of weird. I mean, we only spent a few hours there trolling around the downtown area, so maybe we were missing out on the awesomeness that is Grand Rapids, but it was kind of like Detroit had a baby with Ann Arbor or Royal Oak - it wanted so badly to be this cool, artsy downtown.... but something was just missing. If you have suggestions on things not to miss/do in Grand Rapids, let me know! I don't want to write off that city so soon. :)

It was a great weekend full of lots of good food and good beer (good beer for Dave... never hit up areas known for their good beer when you're pregnant, so terrible :)

Dave became quite the little shutterbug on this trip, which I loved! Between the two of us we took around 300 pics, so here are just a handful:

 There were cool sculptures everywhere you looked, I loved it!

 We're kind of a big deal around here...

 Freezing my tush off on the beach! The rest of the trip was not this cold or windy :)

 My favorite picture Dave took :)

 All those steps + being out of shape + being almost 8 months pregnant = holy moly

 We hiked this big trail through the woods that spit us out in Holland State Park. This adorable jack-o-lantern was left over from their Halloween campout, I just loved it! Some kid worked really hard on this :)

 Shadowy fun :)

 Grand Rapids was wrapping up Art Prize 2012, so we got to see some of the exhibits left. These flowers were all made of pop bottles! "Floral Flourish"

This is a bronze (?) looking sculpture of a man hanging from a wire, suspended between two buildings. Definitely caught my eye and surprised me! The name of the piece is "Gravity Matters Little".

 "Atmosphere", a collection of iPhone pictures of the sky and clouds. The overall effect of this was really stunning.