8/22/18: Wednesday- Ahhh – another sleep in day. When we arrived here a couple of days ago, we docked bow in, and there is a bright dock light right above our bow. We put aluminum foil across the hatch over our bed to try to dim the eternal daylight blazing through our eyelids. It made the room more like a cave and it did help with sleeping. The only problem with that is…. we don’t know when it gets light out. It’s kind of like an interior stateroom on a cruise ship- it’s hard to wake up when it’s dark all the time. Oh well – it was OK today, because we weren’t going anywhere anyway. We checked the forecast, and although the wind had calmed down, and there was big beautiful blue sky for a change, there were still some gnarly waves predicted out there. So we decided that we’d stay put for today, as did most of our looper friends.
After a leisurely morning, I got my bike out for some tootling around. First I went east into town to find any cool buildings. The best that I found was the court house. With my timber background, I liked this bit of Ludington history. It was originally called Pere Marquette, after Father (Pere) Jacques Marquette who was a French Jesuit missionary and explorer in this area in the 1660’s. He founded Michigan’s first European settlements up north, Sault Ste Marie and St Ignace. He died at the age of 37 near here, so this area was originally named after him. There are still many parks, locations, and institutions named after him. Anyway, this town was platted a couple hundred years later in 1867 by Milwaukee lumberman James Ludington, and the name was changed. The town served as a shipping center for West Michigan lumber. 🙂 The town became the county seat in 1873, and this courthouse building built in 1893 was the fourth structure to serve the county. It is built of “Jacobsville sandstone” from the upper Michigan peninsula. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but it is a very rich and dark red brick color.
The library wasn’t anything special, but there was a neat sculpture out front. The town has a lot of these bronze type sculptures around in various places. It looked like a girl releasing birds out of a book.
Not finding much more on the east side of town, I rode west out to the beach. This public beach is huge! There were people out enjoying the sun, and the waves weren’t bad. The air temp wasn’t extraordinarily warm – only about 70 degrees. The weather forecast said that the water temperature had probably dropped by 10 degrees with the big wave action, so there weren’t many people playing in the water.
We saw this sign yesterday, and these are good rules! Kenny questioned the amount of alcohol that is allowed. Is that no single container over 2 liters? So a couple cases of beer is OK, just no kegs. We’re good with that!
This was a fun spot by the concession stand. This Adirondack chair was giant! There were two of them, and I should have taken a selfie sitting in one. I would have looked like Edith Ann. Oh wow – that’s a flashback to the 60’s, huh? If you don’t know who I’m talking about, look up Lily Tomlin and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. “And that’s the trutthhh”.
There was another nice sculpture honoring service men and women.
Then I headed back to town to park my bike and walk around. This was at an antique & junk store in an old gas station.
Ludington is smack dab in the middle of the left coast line of the Michigan mitten. That is – if you look at the state of Michigan, there is the upper peninsula that looks like it should belong to Wisconsin. Then there is the lower peninsula that is bordered by Lakes Michigan & Huron, creating the shape of a mitten. The state of Michigan has more coastline than any other state except Alaska!
Ludington is right in the middle. So they have this logo on T-shirts…. and on the side of a building… that shows it’s location.
The art on this building was fun. Approaching from one direction looked like a bunch of doors. These wedges jutted out from the building. Looking from the other direction, it shows a scene of the Badger ferry and the lighthouse jetty.
This was a little grocery deli store, Biercamp Market, which had some great stuff! It had produce, lots of fresh meats including prepared hamburger patties with all sorts of goodness stuffed inside of them, a bakery, and even a “husband daycare”. Just buy him a beer out of the cooler, and he can sit at the little deli and wait while you shop. So cute!!
And then, I went into the House of Flavors. After all – their ice cream FACTORY is here! It actually had a little 50’s style diner attached, but I just went into the ice cream section.
They had a lot of great flavors, and I hate just getting one. I have learned to forget the cone, and get a bowl so that it doesn’t drip all over me. (I am a slow ice cream eater.) So I picked two flavors.
It came in a HUGE styrofoam glass! I know this was more than a pint of ice cream. And yes- I sat in the park and ate the whole thing.
With a belly full of ice cream, I headed back to the marina. Our neighbors Doug & Dana on Misty Pearl had their pedal boards out. You’ve heard of paddle boards? These have pedals. They offered me to take one for a spin. I said no thanks; they said yes you will .. so I did. These units go pretty good! The board is very sturdy on the water – not tippy at all. They even have shift handles for forward and reverse, and a rudder that you control with your right hand. It was quite fun and you can get around really fast!
Amazingly, they coaxed Kenny onto one too. He doesn’t like this kind of stuff, because he always ends up swimming. But these really are stable on the water. It was a fun treat. Doug said that since he was washing the boat, he didn’t want to put them up yet, so he told us to stay out there awhile. We pedaled around the marina and enjoyed the nice weather.
This was a nice day around town and the marina. A couple of boats did venture out in the afternoon for a short run down to Pentwater, which is just about 15 miles. Most of us stayed put, and will try it tomorrow. It is nice and quiet and calm here in the marina this evening!
