Flashback: VandenBerg road trip, summer 1971

sisters Joyce, Mary and Susan

Joyce, Susan and Mary

Susan, Joyce mother Bernice, Mary and father Tunis camping, sort of

Mary and Susan

Flashback: Grandmother Van Halsema's birthday July 14 1971

l-r: Grandmother Van Halsema, Betsey and Jack Dekorne, John Ten Have

Flashback: VandenBerg road trip, summer 1970

After dropping brother Dick off at Camp Manitoulin the girls along with Tunis headed east for Niagara Falls, New York; Monticello, Virginia; Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts; and paying a visit for a small Van Halsema family get together at the home of Gerard and Fran Van Halsema in South Windsor, Connecticut.

Mayflower II

USS Constitution

Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan

While most of our time in Michigan was spent with family, and especially with Susie's mom, we did manage one or two outings besides looking for a new home (little luck there, I'm afraid).

The high point of  our touring the city was an hour or so spent braving the cold Michigan weather to visit the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Imaginative, creative, incredibly well-thought out and executed, this combination of a musee de plein air and gardens was, to put in bluntly, fun. I can't wait to go back in the spring!

"Bent of Mind" by Tony Cragg

the featured indoors exhibition was: Christmas trees from around the world

"Spiral Helix" by Alyson Shotz

"Corby 3" by David Henderson

the tropical gardens

the orchid section

in the railway gardens section a variety of local buildings made out of natural materials and surrounded by trains

"American Horse" (homage to Leonardo da Vinci) by Nina Akamu

"Neuron" by Roxy Paine

"Eve" by Auguste Rodin

waterfall

"Espaliered Girl" by Laura Ford

entrance to the Children's Garden