Wednesday August 3: Manistee

We are continuing to move south on Lake Michigan. The waters continue to be on their best behavior!

It makes me a little nervous given that we left Mackinaw City almost a week ago and have traveled any day we want. This is very unlike 6 years ago when we were stuck for at least a day everywhere we stopped (10 days in Northport) until we finally just traveled a bit over a hundred miles in one day just to get south on the lake! Our new motto became 'go when you can'!

Anyway, we moved from Petosky to Charlevoix to Leland and are now at Manistee.

Great town with a wonderful breakfast place - more on that later ...



One of the first things to do each morning is to check the weather, wind and wave predictions for the area of the lake to which we are headed. Sadly the one thing we didn't do was turn and look at the sky behind us!

Looking forward, rain on the horizon - no storms forecast so no problem.

Looking behind us at Petosky again a bit later in the morning showed the rain coming and it was catching up! Steve hurriedly put the flybridge plastic in.

The rain eventually caught up but rained itself out rather quickly. Charlevoix was only a two hour cruise so by the time we arrived the rain had left the area and it was a very pleasant day.

This is a very nice marina and the main tourist street is right where the marina is.

Great for people watching and for having lunch at a Thai place. It's nice to be back where it's pretty easy to find a good place to eat.

This is where we were sitting on the flybridge 6 years when we heard someone calling 'Steve'.

Turns out it was Peter (and Cheryl). We had met them originally in Spanish and ran into them again here. They continue to be friends today!!


And then it happened again this year! We were in the front cabin watching "The Help" - great movie if you haven't ever seen it - and we hear someone calling 'Steve'. We half expected Peter to show up but it was Paul and Jill. We had met them at Beaver Island several nights ago and made plans to be in touch when we reached Michigan City (almost at the southern end of the lake) which is near their home.

Turned out we ended up in their home marina tonight!

So they stopped in to say 'hi' and brought Findley with them. Very cute and friendly dog. We'll see them in a week or so.





Leave time Monday was early for the 4 1/2 hour cruise to Leland. This is one place we skipped last time and was a definitely-want-to-see this time around.










The center of the tourist area is called Fishtown. The original location (and still is) of the docks where the fishermen came and went. Still the place to buy fresh fish, souvenirs and of course ice cream! It was quite warm so the walk around town was short.

Steve took a longer walk around the area and found the beaches. Very nice beaches, crystal clear water (only 70 degrees though!).

The place was packed with tourists walking the area and walking the dock. It's kind of fun because during the day it's impossible to see that anyone is sitting in our boat (except through the open door) so you can hear all of the comments about the boat (like, 'look, mom they have a TV on their boat').

 Again a nice marina.

And again a nice sunset.

Yesterday was a long 8 hour day as we wanted to skip some of the towns from last time - except we did come into Manistee. Most of the day was spent motoring past the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.

The dunes are AMAZING. So difficult to convey the size though. Once we were in and tied up, the remainder of the day was spent relaxing.....

Today was breakfast out though. Steve is  such a good sport :-)

Tomorrow we'll rent a car and drive up to Sleeping Bear to see what there is to see from land!!