Green Bay

         Monday (August 7) we were up early to take advantage of the calm.  We hugged the coast and rounded the point into upper Green Bay, into Big Bay de Noc.  (Noc, if you’re wondering, is/was a Native American tribe thought to be Algonquin.)  Our destination was Snail Shell Harbor, and the little town of Fayette.  

Fayette was a company town, owned and run by an iron smelting company.  Workers and other town businesses lived on this little peninsula.  Many of the buildings are still standing, including the iron ore factory, the charcoal kilns that provided the needed fuel, and the lime kiln that processed lime from the nearby dolomite cliffs to help separate the impurities from the iron ore during the smelting process.  The natural harbor provided transportation for needed imports and product exports.  Today the whole thing is a Michigan State Park, criss-crossed with trails dotted with placards explaining how things used to be.  The parks people have done a good job with preserving what’s left and restoring some of the houses.  Their welcome center provides a diorama of the entire town.  We spent hours there both on Monday afternoon and again on Tuesday morning roaming around, peeking in windows of the locked buildings and walking through the ones that were open for self-guided tours.  There is a very small marina with fourteen slips for people that come visit by boat, otherwise one has to drive to the UP to visit this place.  For anyone interested in industrial history this is a fascinating place to visit. 

We left Fayette on Tuesday afternoon to anchor in nearby South River Bay, on the advice of a fellow cruiser.  The shoreline is just forest - no homes, no lights, no roads.  We spent a quiet night with only one other boat in this anchorage, such a treat!  

South River Bay

        Today we dipped south to Washington Island, off the tip of the Door County Peninsula of Wisconsin.   We saw pelicans today.  Pelicans!  Here in fresh water Green Bay!  Apparently the American White Pelican started coming to this area about ten years ago.  It’s been odd being in these Great Lakes, where the water is not salty and there are no sea mammals (or sharks or mola mola), but to also see pelicans here is surreal.  We didn’t go ashore today because there were supposed to be major thunderstorms.  I’ll save shore leave for the next blog.  

I’ve been remiss about Tommie’s portion of the blog.  Here is an embarrassing (to her) picture of one of her first overboard drills, when she was a kitty.  She’s bigger now but she still looks like that when she’s wet.