(Welcome back LG Cherry! - promoted by wizardkitten)
Pam and I started our day at Thornton's Restaurant in St. Joseph. A friendly, family restaurant, Thornton's breakfast menu features a signature item-Big Bob's Big Bomb. The Big Bomb is an outrageously huge omelet whose consumption will earn you a place on Thornton's Hall of Fame. I passed up the opportunity to leave a historical mark at Thornton's, but we had a great breakfast anyways.
After breakfast we headed to Muskegon. The name "Muskegon" comes from the Ottawa Indian term "Masquigon" which refers to a marshy river or swamp. The area was home to native Americans from the earliest of times. Wikipedia points out that when the Wisconsinian glaciations retreated "nomadic; Paleo-Indian hunters" moved into the area. Subsequently in time, Muskegon became inhabited by the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes.
Muskegon Lake, our first stop, can be found at the mouth of the Muskegon River. During the lumbering era, the banks of Muskegon Lake, which served as a natural harbor on the Lake Michigan shoreline, became a site for a number of sawmills for logs floated down the Muskegon River. Later as the State industrialized, factories replaced the sawmills. The legacy of the area is a body of water contaminated by toxic sediments, industrial waste, and the filling of shallow water habitat and wetlands.
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