Tuesday September 14: Whitehall

Sunday and Monday in Manistee were beautiful days - sunny, warm and windy, of course! Manistee is a quaint little town with a redone Main Street that seems though to be suffering with quite a few empty store fronts. We managed to find the House of Flavors - a family owned diner type place that has been around since the late 40's. I think they started as just an ice cream place and expanded. But the breakfast special was not to be beat: $5.30 for both of us including the coffee (ok - so they gave us the $.50 senior price for coffee). You'll be happy to know we did not earn the piggy pin though :-)

Steve found the grocery store and brought back 2 watermelons this time (buy one get one free) while I set the satellite dish up so we could tape the Browns game - too bad they lost but at least they looked decent.

Monday was a designated maintenance day although I didn't really think it would take all day. We changed the oil in the engine and generator. But more importantly fixed how the oil is drained as we discovered the engine was pumping oil into the generator - sort of the same issue we had with the generator pumping oil into the engine. The solution was to replace the on-off valves with ones that had a positive stop rather than the ones that were difficult to determine if they were really closed or close to closed instead. The hard part of an oil change is getting rid of the old oil so Steve made 2 trips to the auto parts store to drop of the old oil for recycling.

After working all day, a quick shower was in order as we were joining some Loopers (people whose goal is to complete the Great Loop) for a pot luck dinner. Steve even squeezed in the time to make Becky's great squash dish - which was a big hit. This group has couples from Texas, North Carolina and California. Nice folks - as we have found everywhere.

Today was a great day to travel. The winds were from the NW so we took advantage of the wind sort of behind us and did some boat surfing down the larger waves (4 foot) until we turned the corner south when the lake began to smooth out. My personal surfing best today: 10.8 mph and overall average of 8.5 mph! Sunny but cool (high in mid 60's). Lots of sand dunes along the shore lines yet. And a cool lighthouse at the Big Sable point.

We plan another long day tomorrow (72 miles today - 80 tomorrow) so it will be dinner tonight and to bed!