Replacing the ocean with a lake opens new possibilities for a beach vacation, if the lake is Michigan and if you like sparkling clean communities whose residents seem to enjoy good times as much as vacationers do.

They certainly produce a lot of festivals in western Michigan, and sustain restaurants, museums, shops, breweries and all sorts of sports.

Local folks seem to like the visitors as well because I encountered only friendly cheerful people on my four-day jaunt along the coastline. I’ve been to cranky places and saw the difference.

I went specifically for the tulips in Holland because I’ve not been in the Netherlands for tulip time and can’t grow them successfully in my hot South Georgia yard.

Saw thousands, maybe millions, of blooms and resisted the temptation to buy bulbs in every color to try one more planting at home. Well, not black because the Holland gardeners say that’s the only color not seen in tulips.

600,000 tulips line the streets in Holland; 300,000 new bulbs come from the Netherlands every year and the process to replace half of the blooms keeps on happening.

No way to count the number of tulips in big meadow-like gardens at Windmill Island and Veldheer Tulip Gardens.

Didn’t resist much else in this stretch of shoreline communities due west of Grand Rapids because fun was abundant. That includes the fun of food and fine beverages.

Holland was my base but I learned quickly that lodging, shopping, fine art, sports and games in Grand Haven to the north and Saugatuck to the south are charming too.

The connecting highways 196 and 31 aren’t stressful roads, and that immense lake water is always nearby. People boat in from Chicago and elsewhere.

Ride a bike if you prefer; it’s 22 miles between Grand Haven and Holland.

Holland has 120 miles of connected lanes and a bike store so committed to matching cyclists to bikes they measure you every which way and even check leg muscle flexion on a massage table to get your pedals right.

This family-run Cross Country Cycle teaches yoga for cyclists, shows and shares remarkable bicycle technology and pretty much provides an all-day experience right in the shop.

Pick and choose from my western Michigan experiences when you go, or start from scratch. Clearly there’s more to discover.

Sure winter’s cold, but hot water flows under Holland’s downtown brick sidewalks in one-inch tubes so the snow melts. Grand Haven is installing a snowmelt system downtown right now.

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.

Great fun to watch. Looks like you can get into this sport for $250 but $500 will buy top of the line quad string kites and controls.

This beach weekend of remarkable kites and flyers is worth scheduling a holiday, just like all the other western Michigan well-done pleasures. Great Lakes Kite Festival in 2010 will be held May 21 – 23.

When you go, leave luggage space for a bowl. The VonTongeren family (lots of Dutch names in Holland and nearby) started making hardwood bowls in 1926 and the founder’s grandson Dave Gier runs the family mill today.

He follows 150-year-old techniques. At Holland Bowl Mill, beech, cherry, walnut and hard maple trees cut in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio become functional art — bowls for using.

Sustainable matters to this family; they leave the little trees and cut only big ones giving 16-inch or larger logs; sunlight reaches the forest floor to nurture young foliage and wildlife, Gier says, and any wood left from bowl making is used in home heating fireplaces and campfires with shavings from fine turnings for animal bedding.

Those big-tree logs are cut into large blocks and then into what Gier calls bowl blanks. I know about Russian nesting dolls but this process is nesting bowls.

Nine, 12, 15 and 17-inch bowls can all be cut from one large blank, simultaneously.

“We are manufacturers,” Gier said, “making tomorrow’s antiques, giving our bowls lifetime guarantees.”

The trees took a century to grow, and seeing themselves as one of only two such facilities in the nation, the other in Anchorage, Alaska, this family company talks often about history, tradition and the environment.

Seems like a theme in Holland, Mich.: the wind miller uses 18th-century technology, city workers plant tulip bulbs by hand and farmers and gardeners favor getting food directly to home and restaurant tables.

Sustainability and green thinking show up enough in western Michigan to be worth another story.