We Are back in Civilization!

deshtrahan
Jul 2, 2023
7 min read

We’ve made it to MaD’s summer home. Bay Harbor Lake in MIchigan. She will remain here until early September so that Mike and I can get back to VT and do some “summering” in VT.

But first, - Before we made it back to Civilization— We had our last night in Turnbull island and then we went on to De Tour, Mi.

Turnbull was another great anchorage with a beach- well a little campsite for the dogs to roam. Bugs were manageable. Worse than the night before, but manageable.

🕷️🕸️The biggest bug event involved a spider. There have been plenty of spiders finding their way on board and being at anchor, it‘s not so easy to just show them the way out. I try really hard not to kill spiders. They eat other things like death eaters, so they are oK. Just not in my bathroom. On this night at anchor, I asked Mike to trap a spider for me so that I could take it to land. As usual, when I am in an “insect” saving mode- he grunted and then obliged me.

He trapped the spider into a cup and then put another cup over it and handed it to me to take to shore.

Off the dogs and I go to our little campsite to set this spider free to go eat things that I don’t feel so fondly about.

😳😬Now mind you. I’m not deathly afraid of spiders like some members of our family, but I don’t want them actually crawling on me….I appreciate their purpose in life, but don’t love them and am a little creeped out about actually coming into physical - like touching each other- contact with one.

We arrived at shore and I valiantly took the spider to shore and set him free to go trap things and what did he do? He came back to me! Like we were buddies now…. I don’t think so.

🏃‍♀️ Hence there is no picture of setting him free as I was running away from the stupid little guy telling him that he was absolutely going the wrong way!!! I assume he changed direction somewhere and is living his life as I didn’t see him -or look for him- after I exited stage left.

Pictures:

Mike trapping spider

Spider on tender

Shore where spider was set free but still wanted to be my friend.

The next morning we uneventfully left for De Tour in the smoke —

Our trip from Turnbull island to Bay Harbor was a relatively easy one. It took about 4 hours to get to De Tour. It was very smoky and no pics…..

We had a super easy check in back to America using CBP Roam. This is the second time, they didn’t even want to to talk to us. I just got a nice little message saying welcome to the United States and that was it. .

De Tour Marina was exceptionally quiet. A lot of loopers are behind due to the bridge in Oswego and I think a lot aren’t in a hurry. They have all summer with the locks being closed.

It seems the locals are put off by the smoke. I’m hoping their summer picks up, but it’s a strange one for sure. It certainly has worked well for us. Everyone has LOTS of room and no waiting for locks, etc.

De Tour is an interesting place because it is in the channel where the freighters go by and you can watch them all day long- no pics- too much smoke-

We spent one night in Detour and thought we were going to have to spend a second as smoke was forecasted for all of Saturday.

Pictures:

We had an hour of smoke clearing in one little part of the marina so I got a couple of pics. The third pic is of a LOT of may flies. Apparently, this means the lake is very healthy.

Had we stayed one more night, we were trying to think of things we could do to make the best of it. But the bottom line was that we were tired of glamping.

We loved Canada. Loved every second of it (except the death eaters) and really want to go back to Killarney and the North Channel. We feel we got a little gypped with all the smoke and want to see it again with more clear days. We are thankful for the clear days we did have.

The Canadian people are just the best. So helpful and friendly. I had mentioned to one of them that I had poached some docks when there were no beaches or public docks available, and they were like, “its ok. No one would have been upset with you. You are in Canada” ❤️😎🐾

None the less, we were starting to miss some amenities. A restaurant that doesnt include “World Famous Fish n Chips” in their title would be a great start. No one eats anything but Fish n Chips up there. And EVERY restaurant feels theirs is the best.

🍤🍤 Emojis are the best I got for this…..🤦‍♀️We didn’t eat out too many times. Literally, if there was a restaurant around, your only option was some man’s name— Henry, Hebert, and I think Gilly or Sully… was another one. Who knows. But whomever‘s name was on that sign, you were sure to get the best world famous fish n chips. That is about all they offered.

It was just funny that it was such a thing in every single little town. I wonder if all those guys know each other? Maybe it’s the same guy just changing his name for different towns? Who knows…. But there is no doubt that the residents and visitors of these little places love fish n chips!

The few Mike tried. He said they were good, but certainly not life changing. The best fish n chips he ate this whole trip was in Peterborough at Gerti’s. That was a just a great restaurant with a menu far bigger than fish n chips and those were worth posting. ( I did post them)

Enough of fish. The bottom line is that the Canadian boating waters are absolutely beautiful and just an all round adventure that we will not forget. Death Eaters and all! But we were ready for some civilization and De Tour still wasn’t that.

🌞With the updated forecast of sunshine in the am, but not the afternoon- more smoke coming- we got moving.

What wasn’t forecasted, was fog. We ran into a fair amount of fog on Lake Huron I can’t say that was much fun, but we got through it and found ourselves in the Straits of Mackinac. (Ok, yes, we knew that is where we were. We just couldn’t see anything prior to that)

Pictures:

Goodbye Detour- Hello fog…

Mackinac Island is technically closed until July 15th, but a boater had told us that they were allowing people in who just showed up at their docks. Last season, they closed early to do a huge dock makeover and while it isn’t officially done, they are taking boats in.

Mackinac was obviously on the way to Bay Harbor and a VERY big bucket list item for this trip. But we passed on by - it was a little smoky- and we just wanted to get to our summer home port.

Mackinac Island is only 3 hours from Bay Harbor, so we will backtrack the 3 hours and go there early September. Hopefully the fires will be under control and we will be able to see something. Regardless, it just seems to be a magical island.

Pictures:

Mackinac allows cruise ships🧐. For everything I hear about it, a cruise ship seems to counter the culture…

Mackinac island

Mackinac bridge

After passing by Mackinac, it was indeed an easy 3 hour ride and the smoke and fog cleared the closer we got to Petoskey.

We are now absolutely back in civilization. There are big 4th of July festivities planned and we actually ate a restaurant that served plenty of nice food. Mike had ribs and I had eggplant and brussels. A perfect return.

🧹🧺🧽Today, Mike is cleaning the outside of the boat. It really needs it. My turn on Wednesday. I will get the inside all ready for us to leave. Today, I did give the dogs a much needed bath.

Tomorrow, we will tour Petoskey a little bit before the fire works and hopefully the 4th will be a chill day.

Perhaps a dingy ride, because when I tell you we have returned to civilization, wait until you see pics of the mansions. I mean Holy Cow!!!! This place is crazy with wealth and mansions. And—that amazing clear blue water that you hear about.

Wednesday, We will give MaD a final cleanout and Mike will meet with the technicians that will do some maintenance work on the MaD over the summer.

🎇🎆This is actually why we can’t be back by the 4th. No one works on the 3rd so he has to meet with them on the 5th…. All good. We will miss everyone in Colchester, but we will enjoy the festivities here. Next Year, we will back to a normal VT summer!

I will do one more post before we leave with stats on this leg of it and pics of the surroundings.

I am also going to do a post on last summer. Now that we are here, we can write about last summer. It was the exact opposite of this trip in that everthing that could go wrong, did.

I will just do some highlights. No need to relive every day. There were some days… 🤦‍♀️😂😬. When you read it, you may question why we set out again. Who knows, we are just some stubborn Fools I guess.

Pictures:

1. Lake Huron in the fog

2. Look how Flat Lake Michigan is!

3. Cool House

4. Blue Water

5-6 beautiful water at the marina

7. Looks like the boat is on glass

8. Marina village daytime

9. Marina village nighttime

More pics- and guess what, we finally have wi-fi so Wix is asking about Google photos and doing this the right way with links and captions. I will work on that over the summer. In the meantime, thanks for hanging in there with us!

Pictures:

1. If you live on the north side of the marina- hint, they have Little Traverse Bay on the other side. Once we take a dingy ride, you will see both sides of the houses.

2. Still north side—little sister- big sister. Right next to each other

3. If you live on the south side of the marina

4. Moon in Bay harbor last night.

5. Out of order- Lighthouse on the lake from our travel down.

6. Mike is hard at work

7. Dogs have just had a bath

8. Dogs much happier looking for food

9. Mike‘s reward