Stats for Monday, September 3rd

Origin:  Leland Marina

Destination:  Sleeping Bear Dunes to play, then onto Frankfort Anchorage

Distance:  40.7 miles

Speed:  8.7 mph

Time on the Move:  4 hours and 41 minutes

 

We had a perfect chance today to move on from Leland, stop by Sleeping Bear Dunes for some exploring, and then drop anchor in Frankfort before dark.  This means we will skip the Manitou Islands, but the weather isn’t giving us a nice stretch of calm to enjoy them, so I guess we’ll settle for Sleeping Bear and move on.

Before we left, Mike had to take a quick look in the engine room for something or other.  This basically means he pulls our whole salon (living room) floor apart and we have to all stay put while he does something very important (not always an easy feat with 3 kids who are SO CURIOUS about what goes on down there!).  This trip to the engine room seemed especially important because he needed to wear safety glasses and rubber gloves and he also needed special water.  Of course we couldn’t find the “easy to get to” rubber gloves, so I also had to pull the whole storage shower apart to get to my “cleaning” rubber gloves which aren’t easy to get to because I never actually wear them for cleaning (or maybe because I rarely clean…?).  Anyway, he tells me he topped off the water on our battery bank.  Very important!  After the floor was put back together, we were all set to head out on the first leg of the day’s journey.

With a whole shoreline of dunes, it was hard to know where to stop.  We ended up stopping just north of the actual dune climb and we had the place mostly to ourselves except for a half dozen or so people that walked by while we were there.

We anchored right next to the dunes and dinghied over to shore.  The water looks calm but the boat was pretty rolly just sitting there, and not very comfortable to hang out on, though the view was beautiful.  The dunes might not look that steep, but that is an optical illusion.  They were steep.  Toby kept asking if they were going to be “tall-tall, like up to Heaven and into space.”  He was disappointed when he saw them from the boat, but he was thoroughly entertained while climbing them!

As soon as we beached the dinghy, the kids hopped off and started right up, life jackets and all!  They made it look pretty easy to just run right up that bad boy, but let me tell ya…it was pretty steep!  Toby got about halfway up this part and just started crying because he was scared he was going to fall.  Colin rescued him and took him down a slide he made to get down to the bottom.  After a few hours here, you will sure have sand EVERYWHERE!!  Especially if you are 7!

 

Knowing we still had about half of our trip to go, we left the dunes around 4.  We had a very fun, exhausting afternoon climbing them, but we were ready for a break.  The kids can’t wait to climb another dune!!  We enjoyed a calm trip to Frankfort along more sand dunes.  As we got closer, we saw an influx of fishing boats.

As we pulled in to Lake Betsie in Frankfort we were overwhelmed with the amount of fishing boats EVERYWHERE!!  And then we noticed that the salmon were actually jumping out of the water all around us.  Mike didn’t wait more than a minute or two after dropping the anchor to get a line in the water.  He and Colin took the rest of us to the playground and then dinghied around the lake trying their luck.  Eventually, it started to rain, and Mike said he hoped one of them would just jump in the boat.  They were really jumping that much!

Sure enough, that night the boat next to us heard quite a commotion in the middle of the night.  They wondered if someone was trying to steal their dinghy, but they soon realized a 40″ salmon had jumped right into their dinghy and was flopping around.  Quite a wake up call!!  Mike was jealous that they actually had a salmon jump right into their boat, but unfortunately, they threw it back in.  They said it would have been way too difficult and messy to clean that surprise guest in the middle of the night on their boat.  This story gave Mike hope that maybe one would jump in our boat and he would get his chance.

The next morning was the first official day back to school for so many of our friends, and it was a weird, bittersweet feeling for all of us.  To celebrate our first official day of boat school, we started off the day by sleeping in.  Then, we cuddled with TV and coffee.  It was amazing.  I was curious about how the first day was playing out at my school back in St Clair Shores, but I got plenty of texts and updates from my girls in the trenches throughout the day.  The kids seemed semi-oblivious to the fact that their friends were all heading back that day, but we talked about it a bit and looked at lots of “1st Day” pics!!  I think we’ll be over that nostalgic feeling about missing school real quick!!

We watched some TV, wrote some post cards, and read some books before we decided it was time to get off the boat and explore Frankfort.  Our kids had their first day of school pics on the playground, on scooters, and on the beach.  Doesn’t get much better than that, no matter what grade you’re going into!!

 

We rounded out the first day with lunch out, more playground time, exploring the town, a little more playground time, and then a trip to the grocery store before heading back to the boat.  After a long day of gym class, we wound down with some “Sid the Science Kid” to round out our subjects for the day.  I could get used to this!  (Or, I already am, depending on how you look at it!)

The next day we woke up to a rainy, windy day.  We were fairly protected being anchored in the lake, but it was a bit rough at times throughout the day.  Check out those waves hitting the breakwall!  Yikes!!

We spent part of the rainy morning playing cards on the sundeck.  All of a sudden I noticed a giant bird swoop down right behind our boat to grab a fish.  I was amazed at how big his talons were, and then I noticed his legs were white–it was a bald eagle right behind our boat!!  Everyone was so excited to see it, but it just grabbed a fish and flew away.  We did see him come back our way, but he was too high to see easily.  Now, everytime a big bird is flying overhead, Toby is sure it is an eagle.

The next day we took advantage of beautiful sunshine and cool fall temps to hang out at the beach.  What a perfect way to spend a not so nice on the water kind of day!!

 

 

Thanks for following along on our adventure!!  We hope we will encourage you to start your own adventures–big or small!  Do it now!