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

Friday June 14, Day 13 of our Adventures, traveled 13 miles, cum of 345 nautical miles

Waterford leaving Mackinaw Island

Mission Point, where we had dinner

We left Mackinaw Island @ 9:30 AM, after a walk to the coffee shop to treat ourselves to cinnamon sticks & a mocha for me-yum.  Sunny, blue skies & air temp finally 60 degrees with water temp back down to 49 degrees; quite a drop from yesterday's.  Waves less than 1 foot, winds 5 knots out of the Northeast.

We enjoyed a nice ride; a short ride to Beautiful Hessel, that is how the female Harbor Master answers the phone anyway.  We arrived @ 12 noon, see a short cruise! We were greeted by the Cheerleader; Gail aka Harbormaster.  Her side kick was an old salt named Rodney, who had a cig hanging out of his mouth, but he knew what he was doing and handled lines like he's been doing it his whole life and I'm sure he has.  Gail told us we were her first guests of the season.  We received the royal treatment, she even offered to give us free pump-outs, if she could train her new helper, not Rodney, but a younger gal who was scheduled in @ 2:00 PM, well as you know we don't pass up too much that's  free, so we accepted her offer.  What a disaster, that's all I'll say.  Poor Waterford went first, so after that, we were able to change our minds & decided to stick to the old saying "If it's free, look out"! Now that I've written that, I don't know if that is an old saying, but it applies here.  

We took a walk & checked out the grocery store, gift shop & further up the road, the bakery.  Well, that got our attention.  Doug's Mom used to make pasties (not pronounced the same as the things strippers wear). Dinner was purchased from the bakery & we were not disappointed.  

Adjacent to our marina, in the same harbor is a boat yard & another marina, which was the first Chris Craft dealer.  There are many wood boats still moored here & they are beautiful to watch.  We are in Les Cheneaux Islands located in the Northern tip of Lake Huron.  These are a group of islands, some pretty good size, with many cottages, so the locals use these boats to go back & forth from the islands to the mainland.  This harbor is host to the 2nd largest Wooden Boat show in the country every August.  Owners of wooden boats arrive from all over our country & Canada to compete & show off their treasured crafts.

After our short stint checking out "town", we headed out in the dinghy's to the ''big town of Cedarville" about 8 miles away by water.  The water was fairly calm and we had a good afternoon of exploring.  There are some pretty big homes along the shorelines with big boathouses filled with boats. Here we are dressed appropriately in sweatshirts, pants & jackets for our ride & what do we see in our travels on the water?  Three people swimming, 2 of them fully immersed and 2 jet skiers who were not in wet suits as expected but in bathing suits.  Are we wimps or are those UP'ers a different, tough breed?  

Beautiful Hessel Marina

Our duck is also having fun, making new friends!

Mackinaw Island;ahhh the smell of fudge, horse sh** and Lilacs

Mackinaw Bridge w/ Freighter

Woke @ 7:00 AM to a clear beautiful sunny day. They had called for possible fog, but it didn't materialize today. We still are feeling those Northern cool temperatures;  air 59 degrees, water 57, we are in shallower water between the islands, that’s why the water temp is higher than it's been.  Left Cheboygan @ 8:00 AM, not because of a long ride but we are headed to Mackinaw Island & we would like a full day to play there.  Arrived @ 10:30 AM,  waves were under 1 foot and blue sky all the way.  We passed between the lower peninsula of Michigan & a big island, Bois Blanc which we were unable to find much about.  It's quite big & a car ferry runs there from Cheboygan.  We asked a gal working in the local marina & all she could tell us was that there is a fire & police station on the island, but she's never been.  She said I've been to Boblo Island down near Detroit when it was an amusement park and she was sorry it had closed (how many years ago did Boblo amusement park close?) 

 Fort Mackinaw

The Grand Hotel

Round Island Light

We passed many ferries headed to & away from Mackinaw Island; some are like the jet express that goes to PIB.  We arrived @ Mackinaw Island State Harbor @ 10:30 AM. Traveling a mere 15 miles for a cum of 332 miles, at this pace the miles aren't accruing very rapidly.   The Lilac Festival is happening on the island beginning today through the weekend.  That is how far behind they are.  The lilacs, tulips & daffodils are all in bloom.  It's beautiful.  

Devil's Kitchen

We got our bikes out & began to circumnavigate the island; planning to get back in time to do a little shopping.  It's 8 miles around the island if you don't take any side roads & there are some hills, believe it or not.  There are some high bluffs along the east shore, where nothing is built.  Of course, we had to go by the Grand Hotel where Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeves & Jane Seymour was filmed.  We stopped for a refreshment break there, it costs $10.00 to walk on the porch, but if you go across the street to the Grand Hotel golf pub, the only cost is whatever your drinks run.  

We really did the tourist things today, even getting ice cream @ one of the Fudge shops, but we didn't buy any fudge.  We dined @ Mission Pointe which is a lodge & resort, which was beautiful & would be great fun in the winter while cross country skiing.  It's all big wooden beams & fireplaces.  We were serenaded by a pianist playing a grand piano & a guy on Base.  Very nice atmosphere. 

We took lots of pictures & it was hard to choose what to post. Mackinaw Island National Park is the second oldest National Park, only to Yellowstone.  Had no idea!!

 

We shopped @ the oldest Grocery store in the country

The Marina, water keeps getting better & better

 

Elton's got our duck!!

Beautiful flowers everywhere

Slipping into the FOG,Tuesday & Weds, June 11 & 12, days 10/11

&We woke to very dense fog this morning. The break wall wasn't even visible, which is the wall that protects the harbor.  We hung out at Rogers City till the fog lifted, which was the plan, but really never happened, because we got a bit antsy & left @ noon. What was happening, was the fog would lift a bit, then descend back on us, sometimes the sun would even peek through, then the fog would return.  When I was a school nurse, we loved these days, we would have the whole day off. 


So we left Rogers City in fog @ 12 noon.  Day Dreams was in the lead today.  Waterford was following about 1/4 of a mile behind us.  Sometimes we could see her, sometimes not. We passed 40 mile Point Lighthouse built in 1896, in thick fog, unable to see, so no pics sorry. It’s on land, north of Rogers City.  We have very good electronics, so we felt safe & we did try out our fog horn, which worked great.  We only passed one boat the whole 5 hours & it was a sailboat traveling south.  We spotted it on the radar long before visualizing it with binoculars.  Our radar worked great.  We hardly have ever seen a boat on any of our runs so far on this adventure.  This great lake & we feel like we are the only ones out here.  That is except for the muffle bugs.  We were hit hard with those today & the small slow flys.  Millions of them!!  Again, luckily we are snug as a rug in our pilot house.

We passed the Poe Reef Lighthouse built in 1929 in Lake Huron, between Rogers city & Cheboygan.  Able to get a pic of that, because the fog lifted long enough for us.

14 foot shoal light built in 1930

We arrived @ Cheboygan County Marina around 5:00 PM.  We entered the Cheboygan river and the Marina is just inside the entrance. Cheboygan is home to the Coast Guard ice cutter ship The Mackinaw II; commissioned in 2006, 240 ft long, 58 foot wide, drafts 16 feet & has Azipods drives, 9000 horsepower apiece & they can rotate 360 degrees to direct their thrust in any direction.(Doug had me add all that for the guys). It's job is to keep shipping channels open in the St Mary’s River between Lake Huron & the Sault Ste Marie (locks), which is nick named the SOO. 

The first Mackinaw ship, was 290 feet, 78 feet wide & was built in Toledo, OH in 1943. She was retired in 2006,  her home also was in Cheboygan.  It is a museum ship in Mackinaw City currently.  Why didn't Toledo get it back? someone work on that, please.    

We traveled 34 miles today, cum of 317, the air temperature actually hit 60 today, no wind  & no waves, again the lake was like a mill pond (not sure where that term came from, but hope you get my meaning). 

Garry had us check out his new lens, he ordered it under way & had it shipped here.  Garry felt he was missing too many beautiful shots without a better telephoto lens.  I think he did a great job with what equipment he already had!!  

Can you see the Mackinaw bridge?

The sun did show itself after we arrived here, so after dinner we took a walk to catch the sunset.  

We planned to stay 2 nights here because Doug likes to say the name "Cheboygan" so we figured this would be a fun place to stay and a bigger city.  Well, it was a fun place to stay, but it wasn't too much bigger of a city.  The fog had rolled back in after sunset and was still with us in the morning, so darn I had to sleep in!  But by 11:00 AM, the sun was out & Doug had shorts & a t-shirt on to wash the boat and there were no bugs-yahoo!  Our boats had been literally covered with bugs yesterday when we pulled into the marina.  There were 2 types of bugs; muffle bugs & those little slow flys.  Today there are no bugs anywhere to be found. Sorta weird! 

We got the dinghy's down, (I know, "Doug is dinghy & so is Jan") and we took off down the Cheboygan River.  Passing the Coast Guard Cutter, the crew were all working hard on general maintenance stuff. Not much up the river, but it was a splendid day to be out, basking in the sun on the water.  We did go far enough to see the lock which takes a boat to the inland waterway to Mullet Lake & then on to Indian River, so one can almost cross the state of Michigan by water, but it doesn't let you get into Lake Michigan.

This was a beautiful day!  We enjoyed dinner on the back deck & walked to the beach again for a stunning sunset.  

The weather radar says you are having storms @ home, hope all are safe & secure.  We are.

Thirsty Duck

The duck drank too much & got sad cuz it was missing everyone, Don't Jump!

We came to the duck's rescue, all is OK

Monday, June 10, day 9; traveled 18 miles for a cum of 283 miles

blue dot is Presque Isle Marina

FYI:  I have heard comments regarding the difficulty of commenting on our blog.  I believe we have fixed this.  Jacque got on the help line & found out the default was set for registered users only, figures google wants more people registered, but tough, because now I have changed it to anyone can comment, without any signing in.  So please, if you feel compelled to comment, please try again, hopefully it will be easier.  Just don't push the preview button, that doesn't seem to work, just click on publish.  

Last night we dined @ the Portage Restaurant right there @ the Marina; we enjoyed some seafood; Jacque tried the fresh Whitefish caught there, but the rest of us did not take advantage of the fresh catch, but were not disappointed either; Garry & I had the salmon in a coat, I was curious about the coat, the salmon was wrapped in a flakey pastry and Doug ordered the frozen walleye caught in Lake Erie.  He must miss it!!

The "new" Presque Isle Light from the water

This morning, Garry had some business calls to make & we ordered a cool piece of equipment that both of us need desperately.  It is an internet antenna booster, so when these places have internet, but it doesn't reach out to the docks, which is what we've been running into, this will route it to us. It will be delivered hopefully to Cheboygan when we get there.  Back in Harrisville, when we met that couple who had cruised Lake Superior last summer, they had it and shared the code with us to use it and it worked great.  And even better, there is no fee with it, just the cost of the equipment.  

We left the dock our latest yet, but this also is our shortest route yet.  We left Presque Isle harbor @ 10:30 AM, the air temp 52, water 48 degrees, skies overcast & it was misting. The winds were 8 knots out of the east, waves less than 2 and diminished down to less than 1 foot, but it kept raining. 

It was such a short cruise, we didn't even have time for lunch.  We arrived @ Rogers City Harbor @ 1:30 PM.  Doug & I have been here before, years ago when we trailered our SeaRay up this far & then cruised to the western end of the North Channel.  

Don't strain to see all of this, but this is a screen shot of Doug's latest & greatest.  This is his MFD (multifunctional display) unit with Sirius weather overlayed on the Great Lakes chart.  The purple squares are weather stations, he can click on any of those & it reads out a current NOAA weather forecast.  The green blobs are rain, just like on the TV weather.  The white plus sign in the middle is where we are; Rogers City.  As you can tell, I figured out how to do screen shots on my iPad.  Thanks to Chuck!

The fog rolled in early evening

Again, we were assisted into the dock by the nicest of young dock hands, it gives us hope for the future, because all along the way, we have met great young adults. The day never improved, but we attempted to make the best of it.  After getting settled in @ Rogers City Yacht Harbor, one of the dock guys gave Jacque & I a ride to Rite Aid & to Glen's Grocery store.  We picked up a few things on our list while Vinny waited for us in the car. He than helped us unload the groceries to our boat, so sweet. The four of us, then walked in the rain up town to visit the Maritime Museum. We arrived there & it was closed, we walked around the corner to another museum we had been told about & guess what-it was closed. Guess tourist aren't supposed to be out touring on Mondays. We did find one fun place that boasted a sign about being open 7 days a week; the old downtown movie theater and Iron Man3 was playing.  What better way to spend a drizzly, foggy night in a strange town than to see a movie & get some popcorn.  It was a bargain @ $5.00/person.

Good night