A Milestone and a Dilemma

We are having an extended period of good cruising weather on Lake Michigan.

Smooth water--Pat is a happy camper

This has allowed us to reach a milestone, but also presents us with a dilemma.

First, the milestone.  On today's cruise between Ludington and Muskegon we passed the 3000 mile mark on this year's portion of the Great Loop.

We don't seem to be able to catch the actual
turnover of the thousands

This means that we are approximately 3/4 of the way to our goal of reaching St. Paul, Minnesota this year. We had hoped to be there no later than mid-October, but if our current rate of progress continues we will likely be there in mid-late September.

The dilemma is that we are very much enjoying the Michigan ports that we are stopping in during our trek down the east coast of Lake Michigan. The marinas have been fabulous and the towns nicely restored, clean, and full of nice restaurants, shops and houses. They have been the kinds of places where it would be easy to take an extra day or two to "chill and relax." But always in our minds is the reality that the weather on the great lakes can change so easily from good to bad. We can either take advantage of this wonderful weather window that we have been given and complete the Lake Michigan segment of the trip, or linger and take our chances with being held up by weather. A difficult decision, but ultimately we have decided to keep cruising as long as the weather permits us to do so. We are enjoying the towns in the afternoon and evening that we typically have in each of our stops.

On Thursday, July 31, we passed Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore and spent the evening in Frankfort, MI.

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Dinner at Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort-the
Michiganders are in T-shirts; we are in sweatshirts

Cruising into Frankfort's harbor

Pretty good ice cream

Frankfort lighthouse and beach

We spent Friday (August 1) afternoon and evening in Ludington. It was lively downtown, with an art crawl, farmer's market, bands and various booths.

Friday night street fair

SS Badger car ferry-Ludington to Manitowac, WI
The last large coal-burning steamship in the US

Ludington Municipal Marina

Tonight we are in a marina on the outskirts of Muskegon. It was a very busy channel between Lake Michigan and Lake Muskegon. The marina isn't close to downtown, which is OK with us, as we really just want to take it easy and not worry too much about sightseeing. Were we of a mind to, we could have gone into the USS Silversides museum.

Vintage Coast Guard Cutter c. 1923 and
USS Silversides, a WWII submarine

Most of the time we are far enough offshore that it's difficult to see much detail in the landscape. One thing we have noticed is houses built at the tops of the dunes. It's difficult to see how far they are from the edge, but it can't help but bring to mind Jesus' parable in the Book of Matthew about the wise and foolish builders. " . . . a foolish man . . . built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." We can't recall having seen news stories about Michigan houses falling down cliffs, so they must be built better than the house referred to in the parable.

Situated more securely than they seem

We are also starting to think of fishermen as Lake Michigan's equivalent of the crab pot. No matter how big this lake is, when we set a straight course from point-to-point we invariably find ourselves on a collision course with a trolling fishing boat. It wouldn't be bad except that many of them seem to be unaware of Coast Guard regulations regarding who is the "stand on" boat and who is the "give way" boat.

Sport fishing is big business in Michigan