Upper Lake Michigan

I believe we left off with our last stop in Canada at St. Joseph Island. Our return to the US and customs check in was a simple phone call while underway thanks to the Small Vessel Reporting System. It's a kind of Trusted Traveler program for boaters that we joined back in the keys. After spending a night in De Tour Michigan we headed over to Mackinac Island for a couple of nights. There we met back up with Knot Sew Easy and Moondance as well as a few other Loopers we hadn't met yet. We did the carriage ride thing with the crew of Knot Sew Easy who had picked up one of their sons and his fiance along the way. We hired a private carriage which gave us a better tour than the bigger "cattle car" tour with the canned speech along the way.  Heck, our driver even stopped so we could pick up some beer for the ride!!

Apparently open containers are OK outside the Mackinac "city limits" and, no, our driver didn't join us in a beer.

She stopped a few places to give the horses a rest and let us get out to take pictures. The smaller carriage also allowed us to go places the bigger ones couldn't. The pic below is one of those places with a nice view overlooking the harbor.

After doing the tourist thing for a couple of days we moved on to Beaver Island and then Little Traverse Bay. Our friends on Jammin' Jane and Liquid Assets had arranged a stay at Bay Harbor Yacht Club where we were hosted by fellow loopers they had met in Marathon. Bay Harbor is a true Yacht Club with some pretty fancy boat$ and houses. Needless to say Chasing 80 felt a bit out of place with our camo kayak up on the deck. Below is a bit newer Chris Craft docked next to us.

Jill and I moved on a day earlier than the rest to get ahead of the bad weather forecast for later in the week. It was a very nice reunion and hard to leave since Knot Sew Easy and Jammin' Jane are about finished with their loop and we won't likely see them again until next year. Liquid Assets is from Nashville so I imagine we'll see them again down the road.

We next stopped in Leland MI. before moving on to Frankfort. A few miles out of Leland we were hailed on the radio by a boat requesting a tow as they were almost out of gas. Once in the harbor they put 147 gallons in a 150 gallon thank....I'll say they cut it close!!

We are now in Frankfort MI and have been for 3 days. The weather is windy and the lake forecast is for 7-10 foot waves through today. We are in a marina protected from the lake by 2 breakwaters and still got beat up all night. Most of the owners here were up till well after midnight adjusting dock lines as best we could. The short video below was taken this morning after things calmed down a bit.

And another one we took after walking out to the beach this morning.

Things are supposed to improve throughout the day today and we may be able to travel tomorrow before getting weathered in again. The long range "forecast" has things improving by the end of the week...we'll see. The hope is to get across the lake and see some of the Wisconsin side but things will have to improve pretty dramatically for that to happen. For now we'll just keep moving down the Michigan side as conditions allow,

One thing we did find in Frankfort took me back to my childhood....yeah, we found a brewery too, Till next time....