Day 362: Sunday, September 1, 2013

Port to Port: Ludington, Michigan

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Marina

First Things First: First time I qualified for a $1 discount on my breakfast because I was over 55 (I’m not sure that is a good first or not).
Mile to Mile: Even though the weather is ideal for travel, we decided that Ludington is a good place to stay for a couple of days while we wait for some blustery weather to move through. Winds tomorrow are supposed to be 20-30 mph with 5+ foot waves and rain. There are even high current warnings along the shoreline and rip tide alerts. The next several nearest ports are okay stops for one night but might be challenging for longer than that. So we get to explore Ludington for more than a short afternoon.

We said goodbye to Down Time and Journey this morning. They are doing a long trek to Grand Haven to hang out while the weather blows through. We may not catch up to them this time. But you never know.

We enjoyed a good brunch this morning with Kent and Jane at the Old Hamlin Restaurant.  On our way back to the marina, we stopped to watch all the fishermen returning from their morning on the water with their catches of salmon at the four-station cleaning station. These fish were huge. I can see why it is a big business here – especially during the fall fish run when they head up into the side lakes and rivers to spawn. I heard one of our neighbors talking last night – they had only caught one fish but it happened to be huge – 45 pounds and it took them 40 minutes to haul in. I guess that makes it worth the hundred of dollars a pound they cost in gas, equipment and expenses.

Cindy finally had time to take a nice leisurely nap this afternoon. Now that is a luxury. I worked on the blog and other online tasks for a while and wasted enough time for docktails to roll around again. Two more Loopers pulled in this afternoon – Steve and Meredith on Free At Last and Looper Dreams (we haven’t met them yet). We found a perfectly positioned picnic table overlooking the harbor and caught up with everyone’s adventures.

We had a nice show just before docktails broke up for the evening – the S.S.Badger, the last coal fired ferry on the Great Lakes, steamed down the channel and headed into it’s slip near the marina. If you used your imagination, you could envision how it must have looked at any busy port in the world 100+ years ago when coal fired steamboats were the high technology of the day. Thick black smoke streamed out the single huge stack and drifted off with the wind. Dirty but somehow romantic. The ship is so old that they keep a sister ship docked just in front of her to use when they need parts to repair something.

We borrowed a few movies from Jane’s DVD collection and watched George Clooney in the Descendants before crashing for the night. I’m always surprised at how quickly our unplanned “down” days go filled with mostly spontaneous and random activities. Hopefully only one more day before we move on to another port somewhere south on our way to Chicago.