Sat & Sun June 15/16, Happy Father's Day to all that have earned that title!

Detour Reef Light

Day 14, yes it is officially 2 weeks that we have been out and we are not heading home-YAHOO.  Although I do miss everyone. Once we arrived at Hessel, we were officially in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for those in the know call it the UP. 

Left Hessel @ 8:30, after Doug & Garry went & picked up the cherry pie, which was still warm. Doug says it was worth that 5 mile walk, (more like a 1/4 mile). Lake is dead calm again today, we are so lucky. We saw more boats today en route (4) than we've seen our whole trip so far.  We passed fishermen.  That is a good sign. We traveled 38 miles today for a cum of 383 miles, making slow progress, but that's what it's all about :)

Waterford ahead of us, b/t water & sky

We left Les Cheneaux Islands and entered the west end of the North Channel.  At 2:00 PM, we reached another island, named Drummond Island.  The marina is called Drummond Island Yacht Haven, sounds fancy huh, but not!!  It is a big Business operation, though.  Denny, who's parents owned the place when Doug's parents used to stay here, not only owns & runs the Marina, but also the campground, the cabins, a restaurant, a sawmill and is a general contractor with a ton of equipment who also dredges & installs docks.  Doug is enjoying looking around this place.  There is a big boathouse here, that we have to walk through from our boats to shore & in one of the corner slips, in the boat house is a beaver dam, pretty smart beaver to pick that place to build his home.  

He's BIG!

The day was a bit cool, but pretty.  We got on our bikes and went exploring.   First stop was a History Museum.  That's where our duck was almost attacked by a bear, but we saved him again.  The boys found another hardware store to visit and we found a gift shop, no surprise there.  Again a one blinking light town, but most of these towns, do have a hardware store, gift shop, post office and a bar.  That's all anyone needs right?  

We decided to stay 2 nights because there is a group of islands here to explore by dinghy.  We have lousy cell phone signals here, but we do have wifi because we have our new wifi booster installed & it is working!  

Sunday morning was a big blueberry pancake breakfast with Peach Bellini's on Waterford to celebrate Father's Day with Garry.  Delicious, Jacque does it again!!  We slept in, took our time & putzd around all morning.  It was a pretty day & even in the 60's.  We were just getting the dinghy's down in the afternoon when we heard some distant rumbling.  Doug looked @ his fancy satellite weather radar and saw a small storm cell headed our way.  We stayed put until it passed.  It passed after about an hour and the sun came out & we were on our way to explore by water.  There are 3 pretty anchorages we checked out, 2 of them each had a boat anchored in them.  If we pass this way again, we now know we could skip this lovely place & have more solitude at an anchorage.  

Boathouse @ the resort

Bay Side Restaurant

The Marina had highly recommended their restaurant, Bay Side Dining to us (surprise), which is located 3 miles away and they wanted to rent us a car, oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Denny also rents cars; what an entrepreneur!   We decided since we were getting such a late start in the dinghy's, that we would dinghy to the restaurant.  Denny gave the guys some rough directions & said there were docks there.  Jacque spied the place with her binoculars, but as we pulled into the docks, there was no one around & the Boathouse windows were broken & it looked a bit spooky.  It ended up we had to walk inland a ways up a rock path to find this very interesting place.  There was a rustic lodge with cabins scattered around and it continued to feel a bit eerie to us. Once we stepped inside, it was quite nice with cloth tablecloths & napkins and delicious food.  Remember Tom Monaghan, the former owner of Detroit Tigers & Dominoes Pizza?  For a time, before he relinquished many of his wordly possessions, he owned this resort where we dined.  He had purchased a portion of Drummond Island & built most of this resort fashioned after Frank Lloyd Wright.  Now Denny and some other investors own Drummond Island Resort & The Rock golf course.  Not sure how successful it is at the moment, but it was delightful to visit. 

cabin @ resort

It had rained a bit towards the end of our dinner & there was a pretty rainbow for our ride home.  

Duck keeps trying to make friends