Back In the U.P. of Michigan; City of Detour/ Day 83/84 August 23 & 24

On Friday, August 23, Day 83 we headed down the St Mary's River, it was another pretty day, lots of fishing boats out & they all were fishing in the marked channel, of course. We arrived @ Detour State Marina which just opened in July after a total redo; all new docks, dredged, new layout, new facilities, everything & it is beautiful. 

No one should be out on these lakes in November!

As we stop and think about this very strategic location on the Great Lakes, over the past hundreds of years, every man that ventured to and from Lake Superior had to pass thru here. Consider the Indians that flourished here with the abundance of fish and wild life, then as the white man discovered the area, other natural resources began to be harvested and transcended thru this channel. Beaver furs from the Indians were worth a fortune to the settlers & traders, almost to the extinction of these poor animals. Indians traded the furs for trinkets.

We biked around a bit. Not really a bike path & not much of a downtown, but there is a post office, gas station, 2 restaurants, 1 bar, grocery, hardware & 2 gift shops. Really everything one needs, when you keep it simple. We dined out @ the Mainsail & had nicely spiced Whitefish & Doug had the fried pollock (a fish)-he is definitely getting more adventurous. 

We stayed 2 nights & ran into Vicky, Chris & Hannah who we met in Harrisville & hooked us into the wifi booster. Good to see you!! 

Not as impressive as Duluth

We biked to the Botanical gardens & the museum. The second day the wifi crashed so again I was not able to work on the blog. 

this is what Doug does after our strenuous days

Summer has arrived for us at Last!! Day 81 & 82 , August 21/22, The Soo

We decided to leave the next morning (Weds, August 21) & go across the river to Kemp Marina in Michigan, where we stayed in June. It is a much nicer marina.  We have chores of laundry, washing the boat, taking the kayak apart & need water & Kemp Marina is a much better place to complete these chores. They also have diesel priced @ $3.99/gal, which is a good price so both boats put some diesel in. We worked all day until cocktail time. I went on Krogen finder & found that Allizan had left this Marina just yesterday. Darn, missed them by one day :(  The boat, Hallelujah, who also just finished the Lake Superior coastline traveling counter clockwise, (we went clockwise) invited the 4 of us over for Docktails. This is our first time meeting or seeing them. They hit many of the same places we did. They are on a DeFever 44. They have done a great deal of boating, so they shared some stories & advice with us for the great loop trip. Thanks Barb & Dave for your hospitality. 

August 22, Thursday we stayed put because we needed to rest from the stressful work day yesterday & finish up a few things. There was a stressful situation in the laundry room yesterday, but it was resolved. We even did a little shopping today & stopped @ the American Legion because they were selling homemade pasties for $4.00 apiece & since we are such experts, we thought we needed to rate theirs. You know, we are back in pastie country. The Legion sells them frozen to go, which is fine.  We'll have them some cool evening in September. It is another beautiful warm, sunny day. 

Yes, another picture of a freighter!