Muskegon

Our month in Muskegon was not all work and no play.  There was plenty going on to keep us entertained – from the Irish Music Festival to the season launch party at Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts.

The Irish Music Festival, a four-day long party celebrating Irish heritage and music, took place at Muskegon’s Heritage Landing.  With six large stages throughout the park, there was plenty of foot-stomping, high energy entertainment everywhere on Friday evening.  And at the Dingle Peninsula there was a preview of the Highland Games that would take place all day Saturday.

Highland Games competitors, both male and female, take part in stone throw, hammer toss, sheaf toss, and the ever-popular caber toss.  The caber toss is said to have begun long ago as a friendly competition between lumberjacks tossing logs across narrow creeks.  The caber is a 19-foot long pole weighing about 175 pounds.  The tosser lifts the caber vertically, balances it on his shoulder, and attempts to toss the pole end-over-end so that it falls directly across from him in a straight line.  Distance is not important – the straightness of the caber’s fall is.  We watched many attempts at the toss but saw few straight tosses, although one of the slightly-built woman competitors (using a shorter and lighter caber) had some success.

Cyber toss

If the caber toss wasn’t tough enough, there was the sheaf toss where the competitor uses a pitchfork to hurl a heavy burlap bag over a horizontal bar above and slightly behind his head.  I would be concerned that the heavy sheaf would come right down and conk me on the head, so I refrained from that competition too!

 Meanwhile, back at Great Lakes Marina, one of the sailboaters was busy playing with his drone and posted this picture on the marina’s Facebook page.  It gives you a sense of just how big this place is – 280 slips big!

Great Lakes Marina

The Frauenthal Center, formerly known as the Michigan Theater, was built in 1929 as a theater for “100% all talking motion pictures” by Muskegon’s own movie mogul, Paul Shlossman.  On opening day, it received rave reviews touting it as the best Michigan theater outside of Detroit.  But unfortunately, like many of the theaters of this time period, it fell into disrepair and almost met the wrecking ball in the 1970’s.  Enter Mr. Frauenthal, a local industrialist, whose gift to the Community Foundation was used to purchase and revamp the entire block of West Western Avenue where the theater was located.  The Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts was born!

 

On Wednesday, September 20^th, the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts threw open its doors for a big Season Launch party to which the entire community was invited.  We sampled the free appetizers provided by many local restaurants and the cash bar at Smash Bistro while enjoying a sneak preview of My Way (the Frank Sinatra musical tribute), a short performance by the a Capella group B Sharp, a behind the scenes tour of the theater complex and much more entertainment both inside and outside this gorgeous venue.

 

 

Outside the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts is a life-size bronze sculpture of silent film comedian Buster Keaton. The sculpture which originally sat outside the Hollywood Entertainment Museum in Los Angeles was purchased and moved to its current location in 2010.  So what is the Buster Keaton – Muskegon connection?  Keaton’s father was a vaudeville entertainer who established a show biz enclave, The Actor’s Colony, in the Bluffton section of Muskegon in the early 1900’s and Buster spent many summers there as a child.

The calendar may say Fall, but the temperatures here in Muskegon are far from Fall-like.  In fact, we are experiencing the warmest weather of our cruise!?!?  Local meteorologists are saying that over the next few days, these temperatures will be 15⁰ above normal!  We have resorted to running the air conditioners – probably only the second or third time this summer that we have had to do so.

Another highlight of our stop in Muskegon was a road trip to Midland where we had the pleasure of living from January of 1981 through February of 1985.  We made contact with our old next-door neighbors, the Pecks, and met up with Bruce and Carol for delightful reminiscing about the good old days and our ‘little’ kids who are now between 35 and 50 years old!  Midland has changed a lot over the past 30+ years and we barely recognized much of it but the old neighborhood was still looking good.



The old homestead at 717 Columbia Road, Midland



And a short term stay here at 4402 Castle Drive, Midland
 

 

The morning of October 1^st generated a bit of excitement in the marina. Just down Lakeshore Drive from Great Lakes Marina is the 120-acre site of the abandoned Sappi Fine Paper Mill.  Opened in 1900 on the southern shore of Muskegon Lake, the paper mill ceased operations in 2009.  The factory itself was imploded in 2013 and the 200-foot ‘power stack number 1’ came down in July of this year. The recovery boiler chimney came down as scheduled at 9AM!  Now that the last vestiges of the paper mill have been demolished, the site will undergo sweeping redevelopment as Windward Pointe with, as you can probably guess, condos! restaurants! retail shops! and maybe another marina!

 

 

 

Rounding out our stay in Muskegon, we enjoyed dinner at Smash Bistro with John and Karen, friends from Great Loop 2002; we had a delicious lunch prepared by the students at the Culinary Institute of Michigan at Baker College; we spent a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon strolling through Grand Haven's ArtWalk. 

Grand Haven ArtWalk entertainment

 



But all good things must come to an end.  So on October 3^rd, Lazy W and crew ended another great cruising season.  Lazy W was pulled out of the water and trucked into her winter storage spot – this time with a FOR SALE sign on her bow.  Who knows what will happen next??



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