Windy here too. Sailing on Lake Michigan isn’t for everybody, but flying kites might be, and visiting America’s only real true Dutch windmill certainly is.

Won’t find that anywhere else in the U.S., or a certified Dutch miller. Windmills are considered national monuments in the Netherlands and it’s unlikely any others will be relocated, says Alisa Crawford, the American woman who learned Dutch to be accepted in the formal wind miller certification program.

She grinds whole-wheat graham flour several days a week in this 248-year-old windmill, moved to this Holland in 1964 from Vinkel. Some days Crawford climbs up the 80-foot blades to set sails to capture more wind, and they’re positioned high on the mill to start with, 125 feet from the tip to the ground floor.

Every grinding day she turns the top caps of the windmill blades to aim them directly into the wind—and that’s done with a capstan wheel so large she has to stand on the rungs to turn it.

“I use 18th-century windmill technology,” Crawford says. “We can carry on an easy conversation when I’m grinding because this is a very smooth quiet operation.

“You’ll sense a little bit of motion, but she’s steady as she goes.”

Crawford must be steady too to have talked herself into what she says is a “very elite guild of Dutch men, plus a few Belgian and German students allowed in the program.”

She returns to the Netherlands in October to take the journeyman exam that she says is the highest training in the world for millers.

Crawford hopes to initiate a European tradition, National Milling Day, in the U.S. and include water-powered gristmills. She’s also an 18th century re-enactor, demonstrating historic trades during the spring Tulip Time festival, an 80-year tradition in Holland. Next year’s dates? May 1 – 8.

That’s the thread running through these beach towns: surprises, some unusual; excellence, presented as the only way to do things, and pleasure, an I-like-it-here-a lot attitude.

And all I knew to look for when I flew to Grand Rapids were the tulips. Did stop in the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and the expansive, very beautiful Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park before going back to the airport but spent my time near Lake Michigan on a new kind of beach vacation.

Certainly was windy at the lake the morning I discovered flying four-string kites; formation flight teams demonstrating at the annual Great Lakes Kite Festival in Grand Haven say this is a sport for ages 10 to 80, or older, but I found the wind daunting on my try.

iQuad, one amazing team calls themselves, traveling from the Pacific Northwest for this weekend event. They even flew kites inside a gymnasium the opening night.

Walking backward gives enough lift for these four-stringers, at least in the hands of the pros.

“Quad line kites can stop on a dime,” says Steve Negen, owner of Mackinaw Kites & Toys which sponsors the festival. A slight rotation of the wrist sends the kite forward and in reverse, hovering or soaring.