Wooden Boat Show-Hessel MI

Monday, Day 15. Here we are in St. Ignace, MI where we stayed for 2 nights. After spending 2 nights anchored in Hessel Bay, and attending the boat show there, we left for here because of impending bad weather. We'd rather be at a marina in that event. Also, our generator was not working and we thought we had better facilities for repair here.
To backtrack, the boat show had 130+ Chris Craft wooden boats of all designs, some of which were restored from 1930 and beyond. They were beautiful and apparantly, if you live in these islands, you have to have one. I couldn't upload any of the pictures of the boat show, but believe me, they were pretty !
St. Ignace is a nice town too and I thought the marina was the best we've stayed in so far.Nice restrooms, docks and easy access to town. They even had music on the boardwalk Saturday evening.
Now the generator is fixed, and at 12:30 PM, we'll head for the Mackinac Straits, the Bridge and into Lake Michigan to Beaver Island--about 45 miles. Weather forecast sounds good.

A boat goes off course?

We saw this boat along the way to DeTour Village---no one seems to know what this is about ! Maybe it'll be a B&B! Speaking of DeTour, this town with a population of 450 has 20 businesses and all seem to be pretty good size--2 large gift shops, 4 restaurants, an ice cream store, a home improvement place and a marine store that was larger than the one at the Soo plus a bunch of others. Go figure...their main street was about 3 blocks--I forgot, we also stopped in the grocery. Tomorrow on to the LeCheneaux Islands where we'll be for a few days at anchor. Apparantly there's a big Antique Chris Craft boat show going on in the little town of Hessel--we were told there is nothing there except one restaurant. Should be interesting.....

Down the St. Mary's River

Today we left Sault Ste. Marie for DeTour Village on the Lake Huron entrance. On th way, we were stopped and boarded by the Coast Guard . The three who boarded checked all our safety equipment and decided that we were okay to go ! While this was happening, we had to get out of the main channel because a big laker was coming through...so that was interesting because sometimes it was pretty shallow right outside the channel.

Sault Ste. Marie

This ore boat and sailboat passed us as we were entering the Soo Locks waterway...the ore boat going down bound like us, the sailboat just leaving the Soo.
Spending a couple days here to do laundry, work on the generator, and miscellaneous stuff. Met 2 men who were going to Duluth and gave them our charts and guides on Lake Superior; in turn, they gave us the info on Lake Huron which we'll need when we head down the rest of the St. Mary's River tomorrow.

Whitefish Point Mall

You can tell this harbor is not a shopping mecca ! However, the Whitefish Point Lighthouse is about a mile walk down the road. Driving, it's a ways to get to but well worth the trip. Here you'll find the Museum, Keeper's House, Bird Sanctuary building and snack and Gift Shop all beautifully restored and updated. We'd been to the Museum before when it was just built about 15 years ago, and all the others have been added since then.
August 5, 2007

Destinations on Eastern Lake Superior

Here is Bob in front of the Miner's Castle part of the Painted Rocks in the National Park from Munising to Grand Marais. August 8,2007

DAY 1 We left Superior, WI bound for Stockton Island early Monday, July 30. Beautiful day with an uneventful journey arriving at Stockton early enough to be able to tie up at the dock. Afte a walk across the island, Bob decided to cool off with a "refreshing" dip in Lake Superior (75 degree water)! It didn't feel that warm to me though ! No internet access here.
DAY 2 After a long day from Stockton to Houghton-Hancock MI (12 hours), we dockd at the Houghton County Marina for the night. The showers and AC felt wonderful after the long hot day. It must've been 85-90 degrees. Overall, the trip over was rather boring...nothing to see but the water, boat or Bob (or me, for Bob) as we did'nt see land or another boat for about 8 hours. Learning more about the GPS !
DAY 3 Spent the day hanging around Houghton and Hancock trying to keep cool--another hot one ! Picked up a couple passengers to go from the Marina to the Houghton City dock (just across the waterway). Bought some pasties--an upper MI specialty which we enoyed for dinner. Spent the afternoon in their new library which was REALLY a nice one. Late afternoon we motored down to the southern end of the waterway and tied up to the harbor of refuge seawall where we spent the night. I docked it here---YIPPEE! A quiet night with no-one but us at this place.
Day 4 Motored to Marquette--another pretty long HOT day. Tied up to the city seawall (I docked it again ! WOW). No facilities or TV so we walked to a bar so we could see about the bridge tragedy in Mpls. Nice uupdated waterfront and parks.
DAY 5 Motored from Marquette to Munising which was an interesting ride. Not hot anymore temperature-wise but perspiring from the situation. Little did we know that a small craft warning was issued about 3 hours after we left Marquette. Waves generally 3-4 feet with some 5-6. Winds got strong from the north so we did a lot of rocking and rolling. But we're here--safe and sound. After another nice shower we walked the town ( pop. 3000) and had a whitefish dinner. Surprising to us, we learned about the Pictured Rocks Lakeshore National Park which draws a lot of people...there are 5 tour boats in this little harbor and they go out on tours each holding about 100-125 people and do this up to 7 times a day! That's a lot of people but because of the small craft warning, THEY didn't go out until this evening! The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow so we'll take our own tour on our way to Grand Marais MI. I have some nice pictures, but at this point I can't remember how to post them...perhaps someone can help me out on how to do this...suggestions anyone?