Guide to West Michigan

Allegan County (W)--Playlist

Douglas City (W)--playlist

* Beery Field (Spring)

* Stroll Down Center Street through Downtown Douglas (Spring)

* Wade's Bayou Memorial Park (Spring)

Laketown Township (W)--playlist

* Saugatuck Dunes State Park (Spring)

Kent County (W)--Playlist

Ada Township (W)--playlist

* Ada Park (in winter)

* Chief Hazy Cloud Park

* Grand River Nature Trail & Preserve / Michael McGraw Park (Spring)

* Roselle Park (Early Spring)

* Seidman Park (Early Spring)

* Sledding at Ada Vista

Cannon Township (W)--playlist

* Pickerel Lake Park

* Pickerel Lake Park - Fred Meijer Nature Preserve (Early Spring)

* Townsend Park (early spring)

Cascade Township (W)--playlist

* Cascade Burton Park in Winter

----Revisiting Cascade Burton Park in Summer

* Cascade Park (Early Spring / Late Winter)

----Revisiting Cascade Park in Summer

* Cascade Peace Park (Early Spring)

* Grand River Nature Trail & Preserve / Michael McGraw Park (Spring)

East Grand Rapids (W)--playlist

* Breton Downs Playground

* Manhattan Park

Grand Rapids City (W)--playlist

* Blandford Nature Center (Early Spring)

* Calvin University Ecosystem Preserve and Native Gardens

* Garfield Park (in Winter)

* Grand Rapids Children's Museum

* Grand Rapids Community College

* Grand Rapids Public Museum

* Lacks Park

* Noodle Fest 2026: Calder Plaza

* Peter Martin Wege Theatre

* The Blue Bridge

* Veterans Memorial Park

Grand Rapids Township (W)--playlist

* Crahen Valley Park, Grand Rapids Township (Early Spring)

* Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park (Rainy day in early spring)

* Knapp Valley Forest, Grand Rapids Township (Early Spring)

Grandville City (W)--playlist

* Buck Creek Trail, Grandville Cemetery, Wedgwood Park

Grattan Township (W)--playlist

* Wabasis Lake Park and Campground

--Parnell (in Grattan Township) (W)--playlist

* St. Patrick Catholic Church

Lowell City (W)--playlist

* Creekside Park

Lowell Township (W)--playlist

* Grand River Riverfront Park

Vergennes Township (W)--playlist

* Fallasburg Park (Spring)

* Wege Foundation Natural Area / Wittenbach Agri Science Center (Early Spring)

Walker City (W)--playlist

* Blandford Nature Center (Early Spring)

Ottawa County (W)--Playlist

Georgetown Township (W)--playlist

* Grand Ravines Park , Grand River Park, and the walkway between them (Spring)

--Jenison (in Georgetown Township) (W)--playlist

* Hager Park (Spring)

Holland City (W)--playlist

* Centennial Park (Spring)

* Oz Exhibit Statues and Herrick District Main Library

Holland Township (W)--playlist

* Nelis' Dutch Village (spring)

Tallmadge Township (W)--playlist

* Aman Park (spring)

Explanation (Why I'm Doing This)

Since I've returned to West Michigan, and have been exploring a number of parks and natural areas with my wife and kids, I've been getting the urge to start recording out little day trips, and making an index of video footage of all the areas around West Michigan.

Why?

Well, I guess first of all for some reason I just seem to like documenting the areas I live in.

I did this when I lived in Oita prefecture, and attempted to create a travel guide to every town in the prefecture.  

And I did this when I lived in Ho Chi Minh City, and attempted to create a travel guide to each district in Ho Chi Minh City. 

And now that I'm back in West Michigan, I feel like it would be fun to attempt to do the same for West Michigan.

The many years that I've been away from West Michigan have caused me to appreciate the beauty of it all the more.  

When I was young, I thought I had to travel to far away places to see interesting and beautiful places.  But now I realize just how many areas of beauty there are right here in West Michigan.

Also, years of living in big and crowded cities in Asia have caused me to become fascinated by small town Michigan life, and I feel like I want to absorb as much of rural Michigan as I can.

I also think it's fun to share it with the world.  Because of my many years abroad, I now have many international friends, some of whom occasionally check in with this blog.  I also have developed some international friends on Booktube, and I feel like it's interesting to share my surroundings with them.  (Having lived abroad, I now appreciate how much of the world is not like West Michigan, so perhaps seeing West Michigan will be of interest to people.)

I also view this project as partly self-educational.  Now that I'm back in West Michigan, I'm embarrassed at how bad my own knowledge of the local geography is.  A lot of the place names sound vaguely familiar to me, but when people ask me about them, I usually have to admit I don't know where they are.  (This is partly a result of being away for so long, and partly a result of not exploring the area when I was younger.)  So when I try to index these little day trips according to the proper county, township and city, I'm finding it to be a good self education to look at Google maps and figure out where these places are, and what the exact boundaries of everything is.  

On the other hand, for the places in West Michigan that I am familiar with from my youth, I'm often surprised to see how much they've changed in the past 25 years.  It makes me wonder how much things might change in the next 25 years.  Which makes me think it might be useful to videotape the way everything looks now.  Perhaps in another 30 or 50 years, this video index of videos might be useful as a record of the way things used to be.  (Standard caveat--assuming blogspot and Youtube are still around in another 50 years.)

But aside from the long historical view, I'm hoping that this index will be useful to people in the area who might want to explore some of these places themselves.

Last summer, my family tried to explore a couple new parks each weekend.  It was a lot of fun, but eventually we got to the point where we had explored all the places that we knew around our area, and were starting to just explore Google Maps for new places that we didn't know.  Whenever we found a new park on the map, we would start to consider whether or not it was going to be worth the drive out there.  (There's nothing worse than driving 40 minutes for a park that only offers 10 minutes worth of activity).  So I would start relying on pictures and short videos that other people had posted to Google Maps.  Once I realized how much we were relying on these short videos, I started thinking I could start trying to thoroughly document each of these parks as a service to other day trippers looking to find new places of interest to explore.  

(I kind of wish I had decided to start this project last summer, because we really did explore a lot last summer, and that would have been a lot of great video if I had gotten the idea to do this at the time.  But oh well, better late then never.  I'm going to start doing it now, and gradually try to build up an index of interesting places from now.)

Finally, I wanted to start capturing some of the family excursions just for the sake of creating some family memories for my own family.  Perhaps in 20 years, my kids will enjoy looking back at some of these videos, and remembering the places that we used to explore together.

To-Do list:

Parks we went to in 2025 that we should revisit:

* Long Lake Park

* Palmer Park

Full Playlist HERE