Almost to Chicago

We are hanging out in St Joseph and Chicago is getting closer…..

But first, I realized I didn’t report on the Ironman Competition in Frankfort. Plus, we were in South Haven from Thursday - Sunday Morning.

Frankfort was a hoot. The town itself was sleepy, but Ironman was so much fun. I’d love to say we were out there doing it with them, but it was probably one of the days we excercised the least as we were just spectators and we could pretty much watch everything from our boat.

Here is what I learned about Ironman-

——There is the pro level, in which people are sponsored and it‘s a pretty big deal. As for the rest of the people, no one needs to qualify for Ironman, you just sign up….

We saw people of all walks doing this competition it was a lot of fun to watch them all.

This competition had 1500 athletes competing. About 75 were pro, a little over 1300 were a mix of everything from athletes to just everyday people doing the triathlon, and 100 did the triathlon as a relay. I’m assuming their scoring was different…. Many of the pros were in this event warming up for the world championship Iron Man, somewhere else…

The day started at 7:45 where they all had to swim 1.4 miles in Bessie Lake, right out front of our boat. It was a brisk morning and the water was cold.

First the pros went out and effortlessly swam the course.

Then everyone else came plowing in. Some graceful, some not. Many had to stop at paddle boards they had set up along the way and rest and some had to be rescued. But the noise from the swimmers was amazing. All those arms moving- it was almost deafening at times.

Next, the bicycle section. People ran ( or walked) to their bicycles, stripped off their wetsuits to reveal their biking garb and off they went. We didn’t follow the bike ride once they left the station, but they went a whopping 56 miles on those bikes. And no, none were electric.

Finally, the half marathon. People ran ( or walked) by the back of our boat and then came back and ran by again For a total of 3 passes by the boats. Some people definitely stood out as you waited for the next leg to see them again. One in particular was a women in a leotard. I missed getting her picture ( 3 times!) But she was in great shape and wore the leotard well, All I could thing of was thigh chaffing 😝

This whole thing went from 7:45 until about 4:00 pm. Some people were done well before noon and others were still going at 4:00sh. At the end we walked up the street to the grandstand and watched a few people receive their medals.

I have to say, it was extremely well organized and we had a blast watching the whole things. We absolutely had the best seats in the house!

1.Bikes the night before all lined up- 1400 plus of them!

2. Runners

3. It was such hard work watching, Mike took a little snooze

Off go the bikers after shedding their wetsuits

More biking

Swimming away

ON TO SOUTH HAVEN—-

South Haven was a cute town and we enjoyed it. We had also wanted to see Holland though and some sand dunes so we rented a car on Friday and did some sight seeing that way as well.

Holland was a cute community and very proud of the heritage of the settlers from the Netherlands.

We went to the windmill gardens - where we were too late for the gardens, but the windmill was shipped over from Holland and is an authentic one. It was very interesting to visit. We also learned that Windmills are considered monuments in the Netherlands and permission was needed from the govt to bring the windmill over to the US.

There was a self playing organ from 1905 which was neat to watch. My video isn’t as good as I would have liked as there was a woman in front of me, but it does show part of it.

Our other outing was to the Saugatuck Dunes which were not nearly as drastic as we were hoping to see. I guess we really needed to trek back to Sleeping Bear Dunes to see the drastic ones, but it was a long trek back . Maybe another time.

Saugatuck had a somewhat short 1/2 mile trek to the beach. A lot of it was sand though and it wasn’t the easiest trek. Not to mention, it was probably the hottest day we have seen all summer on this trip.

We all made it down no problem, but when you have senior little dogs—— Guess who got carried all the way back and guess who forgot to bring slings to carry the dogs in??? We were exhausted after the short little 1/2 mile jaunt!

The dunes were impressive, just not what we thought we were going to see. It was still definitely worth the effort to get down, and make that trek back up the trail. The dogs were great. No sweat off their backs! 😅

While in South Haven, we had a visit from Michael, Heather and Evelyn Williams. It was a great visit and Evelyn brought me some beautiful flowers picked from their gardens.

It was really great to see them and get caught up on life. Evelyn has really grown up and was a delight to visit with. Overall, we had a very nice evening.

Saturday was kind of a funk day. It started out with me contaminating Gizmo’s very expensive vial of allergy medicine and from there, the day just stayed in a bit of a funk. That being said, we did have a good day overall. We wandered around town and went to a farmers market.

The weather was warm enough that at the end of the day, we took a tender ride. Aside from a minor issue with the batteries for the freedom lift remote dying upon return to the boat, the tender ride was the best part of the whole day. We went up the river and then took the tender out onto Lake MIchigan to watch the sunset. It was pretty darn awesome.

In order to do the tender ride, we passed up on a looper ribs dinner, which I am sure was great fun. Instead, after the tender ride, we ordered arguably one of the top 5 worst pizzas I have ever had! I still can’t believe how bad it was. Mike didn’t dislike it as much as I did, but man….

It was a great day overall, but I was ready for a reset on Sunday.

Pictures:

The ride down. Lake Michigan is beautiful, but I’m taking less pics as it’s all pretty similar.

1. A schooner that gives tours and ran up and down the river.

2. Trail to the beach

3. Beginning of the dunes

4. Dogs getting wet. It was actually really hot out. And no, they weren’t on board for wet paws. :)

5. Windmill

6. through 9. Inside of the Windmill. It was hard to really capture it in pictures.

10. The organ

11 A replica of a drawbridge

12. An interesting house in town,

13. An actual floating house on the river

14-18 random pics on the river

19-20 Michael and Evelyn

21 Beautiful flowers

Video- the organ playing

ST JOSEPHS-

We did get a reset on sunday and had a beautiful trek to St Josephs. But this post is long enough so I will report on St Josephs in the next post.

And, if the weather remains good, tomorrow we will take the 60 mile run across the lower portion of the lake and arrive in Chicago!!

Until Chicago-

MadDog signing off