Where I Live Wednesday: An Overview

*** Pardon the interruption!  I'm doing some re-organizing here today, so don't mind my mess while I make some improvements to the blog!***

"Where I Live Wednesday" will feature a different place in Michigan each week.  It will start out very local, with the immediate area in which I live (different areas of town, my house, stores and restaurants, etc. etc.) and expand over time to include adventures to other places in the great state of Michigan.

For my first post, I wanted to give a general overview of both Michigan, and Grand Rapids, where I live.

According to Wikipedia...

Michigan is the eighth most populous state in the United States. It has the longest freshwater shoreline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair.  Michigan has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds.  A person in the state is never more than six miles (10 km) from a natural water source or more than 87.2 miles (140.3 km) from a Great Lakes shoreline.

Michigan is the only state to consist entirely of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is often dubbed "the mitten" by residents, owing to its shape. When asked where in Michigan one comes from, a resident of the Lower Peninsula may often point to the corresponding part of his or her hand. The Upper Peninsula (often referred to as The U.P.) is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile (8 km)-wide channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The Upper Peninsula is economically important for tourism and natural resources.

Although born in the UK, I moved to Michigan when I was in 8th grade, and lived with my parents and brother in the small city of Tecumseh (I'll introduce you to Tecumseh in another post!)  I now live with my husband Travis and our small zoo of animals in Grand Rapids.

Again, according to Wikipedia...


Grand Rapids is located on the Grand River and is approximately 30 miles from Lake Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 197,800, making it the 114th largest city in the United States. It is the  second largest city in Michigan (after Detroit), and the largest city in West Michigan. 

Nicknamed the "Furniture City", the major industry in Grand Rapids once was furniture production. However, the city and surrounding communities are more economically diverse today, and contribute heavily to the health care, automotive, and consumer goods manufacturing industries, among others.

You'll have the opportunity to read lots of posts about Grand Rapids in the future, there is a lot going on here and plenty to photograph and introduce you to!  But for now, take a look at this video.  It is a little cheesy, yes, and some of the footage is a little dated, but it's nice all the same.  The accompanying song "My Giant Little Town" is written and performed by Brian VanderArk, of The Verve Pipe fame.  Grand Rapids is pretty proud of Brian and takes to using him in promotional things whenever possible it seems!  : )

Enjoy!




Come back next week Wednesday to start exploring my life in Grand Rapids!