If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old

. . . And Other Discoveries Along Lake Michigan

Part of the fun of traveling the Loop is making discoveries along the way. 

One was the table at the St. Joseph Municipal Marina decorated by the West Basin Performance Boating Association (aka cigarette boaters).  If you’ve never seen a cigarette boat, it’s long, powerful and free of mufflers. You hear them before you see them.  We reluctantly admit they are too loud for us.

Life in the slow lane

At South Haven, the stop before St. Joseph, we were greeted by a tractor parade passing by the marina.  Tractors and people of all shapes and sizes drove by the docks as we all waved wildly at each other.

This shows the parade right before the tractor drivers and cruisers began waving wildly at each other. The parade went on about 10 minutes longer. It was much longer than just this group. There are lots of tractors near South Haven.

We thought this tractor was unusual. It turns out to be an orchard tractor to care for and harvest the cherry, apple and other crops grown in Michigan. The rounded edges keep the tractor from breaking branches.

Moving Down the Lake

South of St. Joseph/Benton Harbor, we stopped overnight at Michigan City that is oddly enough in Indiana.

It has dancing community art (one dancer is a wine opener, the other a beer opener),

A downtown nuclear plant (don’t get ideas, TVA!),

The largest marina we've been to so far (this is just a very small portion),

And police on Segways! Is that not the coolest cop you’ve ever seen?!

More Sand Dunes

The shoreline of Michigan is just a series of sand dunes, the largest up at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. They don't stop at the state line, though.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has large dunes, maybe just not quite as tall as the State of Michigan's.

Early morning light strikes the Indiana dunes.

Up the Calumet River, Down the Mast

We’ve both fought colds in Michigan and are glad to have won the battle about the time we left the lake. We're still dragging a little, though. 






To make the trip easier, we chose to have the mast lowered at Crowley's Yacht Yard on the Calumet River. The river is an alternative route to the inland river system, one that we're taking instead of going up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal through downtown Chicago.

We're trying to make a photo video of the lowering and will post it on the blog if it works.

The highlight of the day was seeing Brad, a city planner and writer, who is Kent's cousin's son. That makes him Kent's cousin once removed or is it second cousin? He was a great help, bringing ice and bubbly to celebrate completing our Loop later, and taking us to the grocery store to provision. For those and many other reasons, we're glad he's part of our family.


Next: To the Illinois River