Days 161,162: Hiding out in Ludington

8/20/18 Monday:  I had someone ask me about our journey down Lake Michigan to Chicago.  Here is a little map that I marked up with all of the stops we’d like to make.  As I mentioned before, there are ‘safe harbors’ about every 30 miles or so, and they are all unique little lakeside towns.  At the top of the map is Mackinac, then we went west to Beaver Island, then back east to Petoskey.  From there, we’ve just been jumping our way down the coast.  The dot about half way down is where we are now – in Ludington.   Our plans are changing, as the weather has become a little rougher and windier.  Now we likely won’t stop at all of the places that I marked, but we’ll probably make longer jumps and stay a few days, rather than short jumps every day or two.  The bottom left is Chicago.  Our hope is to jump to Chicago from Michigan City, Indiana, which makes for just a 36 mile jump.  The stop before that is St Joseph, which would be a 60 mile jump to Chicago.

Here is our view as we left Manistee this morning.  The pier wall has this interesting elevated walkway all the way out to the lighthouse.  It was a cloudy almost foggy day today, but our journey was only about 3 hours.  Since there is windy weather coming, Gypsy and Phanthom continued farther south than us today.  We may wish we had done the same.

We arrived at Ludington, and went into it’s harbor.  These harbors are becoming familiar in design with the double breakwater piers that jut way out into the lake!  The municipal marina is just on the north side of the entrance in the bay, and it is surprisingly protected from wind and waves.  We are glad about that, because there is some rough weather coming!

Check out this forecast.  We decided we would stay here for 2 or 3 nights.  Even if Island Girl can handle 5 foot waves, this crew cannot!  Let alone 6-9 foot?!  Holy shipwreck Batman!

We wandered around the marina on our way to scope out town.  There were a lot of fishing boats here, and there was one that was just unloading it’s cooler full of fish.  This fella was pretty happy with this catch!  That big fish in the middle is a King Salmon.

And there was quite an impressive fish cleaning station!

As we wandered around town, there were lots of shops, restaurants, and yes – ice cream and fudge.   This town even has two breweries and a bakery.  I think we’ll get along just fine for a few days.

Cops & Doughnuts is THE bakery for fresh made doughnuts.  Yes – of course we took a box of goodness back to the boat!

This was the ice cream FACTORY!  Yep – House of Flavors ice cream is created right here in Ludington!

We have found that the municipal marinas often have beautiful parks nearby.  This park has quite a few statue works of art.  I thought these children were cute, looking like they are walking across a creek on stepping stones.

Around 5:00, we gathered up a gaggle of loopers.  There must be nearly a dozen boats here in this marina – and once again, there were some who we had never met before!  Pictured here are Antonia, Island Girl, Compass Rose, Second Wave, Plan Sea, and Happy Destiny.  Also on the dock was Babe, Nova Journada, Band Wagon, and a couple more that I don’t remember.

While we were enjoying the evening, we heard the Badger honk it’s horn, so we went out to watch it come in.  The Badger is a ferry that runs from Ludington 60 miles across the lake to Manitowoc Wisconsin.  It is registered as a National Historic Landmark.  The S.S. Badger entered service in 1953, and is the last coal-fired passenger steamship in operation in the United States.  Ferry service actually started way back in 1875 to transport goods from rail cars.  By 1897, the ferrys were built larger and actually included 4 sets of railroad tracks, so the whole rail cars were loaded onto the ship, and helped coin the term ‘car ferry’.  They stopped ferrying rail cars across in 1980, but today it is a passenger car ferry.  Watching it come into the harbor in Ludington was interesting.  In this picture, it had just come into the harbor, and dropped it’s anchor.  Then it pivoted around on the anchor, and backed into it’s pier off to the left.  It is quite an interesting way to dock a ferry!

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8/21/18: Tuesday –  It rained last night, and the wind blew.  The wind continued to blow today.  When the rain seemed to have stopped, we went for a walk to see how bad the waves were out on the lake.  The water in the marina was completely calm, and the flags just fluttered around some, but not bad.  Every once in awhile we’d get a gust that would tighten all the lines, so we really wondered what was going on outside of the protection of the marina.   Over by the huge swimming beach, we found a mini-golf.  It was way too windy for this really bad mini-golf player to try to play, so we kept walking.  😉

There is a huge beach park here – what a great place for fun in the sun – when the sun is out!

We walked out just a little ways onto the pier to see the waves, and yes – they were crashing!  Confirmed :  Not a good day to be on the water!

Meanwhile, I received a text with this great picture of our youngest (2.5  yr old) granddaughter.  She loves to buzz around on her electric quad!  I do miss my kids & grandkids, all who live in Washington State, so it’s great when I get pictures of them!

This was a quiet day around the marina.  Every looper boat stayed put, and not many ventured out of their boats much because of the wind and rain.  I’m really glad we found a protected place to be docked.  Tomorrow looks like it could still be rough, so we paid for another night to stay here, as did most other loopers.  It is fun to be “stuck” together in a place where we know people!