The city of Beaver Island

The town was pretty interesting- 3 museums— toy, maritime and printing.  In the 1800’s a Morman named Jesse Strang moved to Beaver Island and declared himself “King”—reminds me of some present day politicians—anyway he got assassinated by 2 disgruntle parishioners and when the authorities  caught up with them they did nothing.  Sounds like a mean dude.  The Irish then moved onto the island along with a German Prussian named Protar (by way of Rock Island, Ill.) and their stories are told in Morman Print Shop Museum.  The Irish came from Aaronmore, County Donogal, Ireland and one of the main families was O’Donnell’s –small world.  The Maritime Museum focused on the wreck of a big freighter and the Toy Museum had the toys of the 50’s and 60’s plus sold a lot of the nickel toys of our youth—yoyo’s, paper dolls, etc.  At 5pm and 9 am the Catholic church of the town play the bells of old time religious song (and last night they ended with Danny Boy) for 10 minutes—it is really a nice way to announce evening Happy Hour.   

King Strang was big



Loved the purple car

And this neat water-front house

Greer's wall in the Toy Museum

Holden's wall in the Toy Museum

Pretty church with the pretty music

 

Beaver Island --the move from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan

This is the BIG island in the middle of northern Lake Michigan and offers (for the price of about 30 miles across open water) a very protected harbor in which to anchor.  We needed to wash the bugs off and rest our weary feet.  The bridge from the Michigan mainland to the Upper Peninsula is called the Mighty MAC and is actually I-75 and separates Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.  The winds have kicked up to 30 mph gusts so we are thankful for the well protected anchorage and will hunker down for a couple of days until they get under 10.  Sorry to tell you guys in the sultry South but we have gotten the blanket back out for the foot of the bed.  Last night was perfect sleeping with all the windows open but it was around 50 degrees.  We are watching the 4 decade highlights of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for entertainment and last night we saw Frank Sinatra on with Johnny and Don Rickles so then we listened to our CD’s of Frank along with Sammy Davis, Jr and Dean Martin.

Sunset at Beaver Island

Central Mi. University Biological Annex is at the entrance to Beaver Island

Leaving Mackinac Island

The Western Bluff on our way out

The Mighty MAC

Sunny Days likes her protected harbor

This big boy was our neighbor

Mackinac Island --Part 2

We decided to take a horse drawn carriage tour, The Grand Hotel (lunch and tour), walk the Western Bluffs, bike the more remote National Park (we didn’t circumvent the 8.2 mile island- should have but it would have killed us), tour Fort Mackinac, try each of the samples in the Fudge shops, and I had to have one of the advertised chocolate fudge martini’s.  Check, Check Check….One night we forced the Sisters to watch some of our latest Internet find—Jeanne Robertson—they laughed as we knew they would.  On Saturday they moved to Bay View Bed and Breakfast on the east side of the marina where they had a breakfast real non- floating bed and a much coveted bath tub. On Sunday, the Ferry took the Sisters back to Mackinac City to drive home and we go on to Beaver Island.   Katt in the Hatt came in the harbor as we are at the Ferry and we catch up with them before we take off.  We have to go out and anchor so we can eat all the food I didn’t cook in Mackinac.  This will go down as our favorite stop on the Loop so far.  Great company, a lot to see and do and after the seclusion of The North Channel and the Georgian Bay and the work of the Trent Severn, we were ready to be tourist. 

 

Bay View B&B

Fort Mackinac

Lunch at The Grand Hotel

Ordinary Bike was in town (Penny-Farthing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing)

The Arch

Chandelier in The Grand

The Grand Hotel

Top of the Grand

Mackinac Island--Part 1

We pulled into Mackinac Island at noon on Wednesday with reservations until mid-day Sunday—and we needed every minute of the 5 days.  Mackinac Island is a state park with no motorized vehicles of any sort allowed. The summer homes of the wealthy Michigan-ers are magnificent and the quaint village rich in fudge, shops, B &B’s and restaurants offers a lot to do.  To get around you either walk, bike or ride in a horse-drawn carriage.  Sue and Vivian—first company and delightful-- arrived by ferry 2 hours after we docked; bearing gifts of  designer beer,  mail, camera battery, snacks, the best food yet—a Tennessee home grown tomato but most importantly, an adventuresome attitude and good walking shoes. Captain’s Choice had come in day earlier and joined us for docktails on the boat as we discussed our plan of attack.  Mark and Karen had done a little recon work for us—cherry, walnut choc fudge, hiking paths, the Western bluffs, The Grand Hotel etc. we leave these running buddies here as Thursday morning they are leaving heading the rest of the way down Lake Huron to Lake Erie and then home to Buffalo, NY--will miss them!  Sue, Vivian, Terry and I hit the ground running—we got into a routine of breakfast and coffee on the boat, site-seeing, big lunch, site-seeing and then happy hour with some appetizers, fall into bed—non-stop for 5 days.    

Sisters arrive by ferry

Weddings seemed to be every half hour on the weekend



Cairngorm was my favorite home on the Western Bluff



The Michigan Governor was in residence the entire time we were there

The gardens were unbelievable

The team had a game plan

Les Cheneaux Islands

Anchoring wearing my favorite t-shirt

We took off for Government Bay, a launching anchorage before going to The Island (Mackinac). Had a couple of cloudy/rainy days but when the sun peeked out and we dingy-ed to Cedarville.  Along with Hessel they are the small towns that have the restaurants (very important), museums, shops and points of interest of the Les Cheneaux Islands.   After a great lunch we took a cool tour of the Great Lakes Boat Building School.  They show/teach how to build a traditional wooden boat and teach the basic skills of woodworking and everything to do with putting one together --the class built 2 sloops and two canoes this school year.  The tour leader was quite proud that they had 100% employment for their graduates from last year and we noticed that  they had 2 Tennesseans in this year’s class of 15.  This is a beautiful area for vacationing Michigan-ers and they are trying their darndest to build an educational mecca—in Hessel there is a culinary school of some repute.  This weekend they are having their annual Antique and Classic Boat Show so there will be lots of people in town. Big doings in the Fitzpatrick/Norris household-- today was Leeton's first day of Kindergarten (oh my it seems like she was just born) she reportedly loved it--we are proud.

A kayak and a sloop built at GLBB School

A paddleboard in progress

 

The Great Lakes Boat Building School



Cool house in Cedarville

Cheboygan County Marina—Blue Moon

July 31^st was a really pretty blue moon and it has been a  nice, productive lay over to clean out the spiders and re-provision.  We are 1 mile (flat land) from town with a few good restaurants, and 2 miles from Walmart and Walgreens.  The bikes have gotten quite the work out. A salmon fishing tournament has been out of our marina and we were hoping to buy some fresh catch off the fishermen.  No fish from the fishermen but a new item we have found in Northern Michigan—Kathy’s Pasties-- they keep advertising these here on the radio—a pot pie calzone --http://kathyspastie.com/what-is-a-pastie. We have also found a great Oldies radio station Easy 106.3 —Elvis, Muscrat Love, Lionel Ritchie.   As we ride out the storm here at Cheboygan, we are hoping all our friends are not crossing Lake Huron right now and are safe in a protected marina or harbor--the storms and wind come up fast.  We spent this time planning our August and knowing that if we remain flexible then Lake Michigan will be a lot of fun with new territory to explore.  After leaving Mackinaw Island on the 9th,  this is the VERY loose plan—Beaver Island (Anch), Harbor Springs (Anch), Charlevoix (Marina), Sleeping Bear Point (Anch), Frankfort (Marina-Provision), Manistee Lake (Anch), Pentwater (Anch or Snug Harbor Marina), Whitehall (Anch), Gran Haven (Marina), Saugatuck (Anch), then on to Chicago where we hope to meet Katie and the kids on Sept. 3^rd for a run at the big Windy City. Fitz says we have to ride our bikes in the rain every once in a while- I guess to prove our meddle.  So we took off for our last trip to the grocery since it was in between storms and we had no power to the dock.  The town had had quite a damaging wind and rain.  We got a little wet—what the heck, we are boaters.


Big storm damage in town

They had this in firewood by the time we came back after the trip to the store

   

Our dock here at Cheboygan County Marina 

Those in orange are not UT Vols--they are the salmon fishermen

Harbor Island, Detour Village to Cheboygan

Detour Village is one of those places that is in all the books and we will probably be sorry we didn't dock there and take the tour but we had a weather window so we moved on.  We left our fabulous anchorage at Harbor Island early to make the crossing (30-ish miles) of Lake Huron—open water, 3 light houses.  There was little to no wind and very warm but we made our own wind and had a very comfortable ride.  We pulled into Cheboygan County Mariana around 2pm and plugged in.  Storms and high winds are due  but for now we can get out our bikes and ride the mile into town . At Johnny’s Sports bar we had a cold beer and hamburger--first meal out in the USA and it came in under $25—haven’t seen that for a while.  Another first is that we had to fire up the air conditioners—it is hot and muggy.  We will gas up here—diesel fuel here is half the price than in Canada.   We will take a few days in Cheboygan for many reasons: we need to do some homework on traversing the eastern shore of Lake Michigan; grocery, pharmacy, laundromat are all an easy bike ride,  and big winds are forecast for the next few days (3-5 ft. waves on Lake Michigan).  It helps that there are some good restaurants and strong Verizon reception here too. 

DeTour Village with the marine pigeons lined up on the pilings

 

DeTour Lighthouse

 

Cool home on Lake Huron-notice the happy turtle statue

 

DeTour Church
 

 

Pulling the anchor in Harbor Island

 

Spectacle Reef Lighthouse