Saturday August 6: Ludington

Movement south on Lake Michigan continues. We were stuck in Manistee an extra day due to the wind an waves. I knew I was jinxing ourselves!!

Not that we didn't try to move on yesterday. Forecast was for lighter waves than what we found to be out there. Traveled a total of 2.3 miles as we quickly decided that we didn't need to travel broadside for at least 2 hours in waves like that!

It would have been fine if we were going directly into the waves or going with them but not to be so. Broadside it was.

Back to the dock at Manistee!

The day before we had rented a car to drive north to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore. The scenic drive around the park was nice.

This is an overlook view on the drive. Many lakes in Michigan were formed when the rivers feeding into Lake Michigan silted over and eventually closed the link to the lake. Thus the small inland lakes were formed.

Of course the biggest draw is the sand dunes themselves. The name of the park came from a Native American legend that a mother bear and her two cubs were driven to the western shore of Lake Michigan by a forest fire. To survive, the bears set out to swim to the eastern shore. The mother made it to shore but the cubs were behind her. She climbed the dune and laid down to watch for the cubs. Sadly they didn't make it but the North and South Manitou Islands rose where the two cubs perished.

And so the park became the Sleeping Bear Dune National Seashore!

Viewing platform 450 feet above the lake

This is a platform that is 450 feet above the lake level. It overlooks the dune that goes down to the shore.


Look closely - these are the crazy people that went down the dune to the water and then back up!

If you go down and can't make it back up, you have to pay to be rescued!! Sometimes it just costs $$ to be stupid :-)


As Steve walked up to a higher level, I took the opportunity to relax in the shade :-)





Steve also did the popular dune climb. He's about half way up - see under the red arrow!










The parking lot is in the center of the picture left. Quite the climb for sure!!

















We spent the rest of yesterday checking out the trolley ride around the historical parts of Manistee - quite interesting. Lumber was the thing here and this small town had the highest percentage of millionaires per population of any place in the US in the late 1800's.

Then we figured out how this happened on one of the plaques on the Riverwalk!

Never knew that the US government  declared war on a city!!

Bottom line: timber was all cut down by the early 1900's and that was the end of the lumber barons.

The cutest little ducks hung around where we were docked. It was fun watching them :-)


So we left this morning at 6;30. The  waves were higher than expected but not as bad as yesterday so off we went. Still mostly broadside for the first two hours but Steve had put the steadying sail up so that was quite helpful!

A trawler like ours was coming toward us to give you  an idea of what the lake was like.

Fortunately by this time the waves were directly behind us so much smoother sailing!



More about Ludington tomorrow ........ lots of time to do the blog on the 67 miles to Grand Haven!!