Venetian Festival

Every year here on the third weekend in July they have the Venetian Festival, which is pretty popular. I haven't gone since 3 summers ago when I was here as an intern. I wasn't planning on going this weekend, but some of my friends from South Bend wanted to come up and go to the beach so we hung out downtown all day.

This is Dave-he didn't fit in the boat so well. My mom also posted pictures of these boats from her visit.
I was good and avoided the fair food, but I couldnt resist a chocolate covered banana-yum!

St. Joe pier. My phone camera apparantly chooses its own resolution, I don't know why some pictures turned out and some didn't. The beach was pretty crowded today. Saturday it rained pretty much all day so everyone who wanted to go to the festival really had to go today.
Some of the rides they had there, we didn't adventure into that area.
See the sailboats in the background? They were out all day. I was jealous-I would have loved to have spent the day on a boat! I guess the beach isn't a bad back up choice though.
We spent several hours playing volleyball. They have about ten courts down on the beach.
Every year they bring in bands for the festival. A couple years ago it was Styx but they haven't done that well with band selection since. Besides local bands at various spots the mainstage had Loverboy, some guy from Hannah Montana, John Waite, and Jason Michael Carroll.

Jason Michael Carroll played today and it was pretty cool because he played the whole time we were playing volleyball and you could hear it perfectly! For you country fans out there he sings "Alyssa Lies", "I Can Sleep When I'm Dead", and "Livin' Our Love Song". I guess he doesnt have a lot of his own stuff because he also covered a few songs including REO! Can't beat that.

I found out earlier today that there was mile swim race on Saturday in the lake. I was really bummed out because I would have liked to have raced, and the lake temperature was really perfect this weekend. I knew about the run, but I never knew there was a swim too. Oh well, next year.

We ended the day with a late dinner at Schu's (my parents favorite restaurant on the lake). All in all a good day, but how can you not have a good day hanging out on beautiful Lake Michigan?