September 10, 2008: South Haven to New Buffalo, Mi

Today was a busy day beginning with our search for a land line for me to take an important telephone call. I was giving a presentation over the phone, and was afraid that the cell phone coverage would drop my connection. Tom finally called a local attorney who extended professional courtesy for me to use a phone in his office.

Afterwards, we went to the local market and bought local blueberries and peaches. We have discovered this was the home of the Michigan State University’s South Haven experiment station where from 1924 to 1963 Stanley Johnston cross-bred peaches. This study led to the selection of eight new yellow-flesh, free stone peach varieties which extended the peach season from 3 weeks to 7 weeks. Remember we bought Red Haven peaches earlier this summer? Well, Red Haven was one of the varieties, named after South Haven, and the most frequently planted peach in the world. There is a park here in Professor Johnston’s honor and an iron fence with each of the peach varieties spelled out in the design.

We rode our bikes around the small town and over the bridge which was banked with beautiful red flowers. I stopped to take a picture and noticed a memorial sign on the planter boxes. The flowers on the bridge were dedicated to a couple “By their children and grandchildren, with thanks for all the happy summer memories” which brought tears to my eyes as I thought similar thoughts of my family.

Then after lunch, we cast off to cruise south with our first stop at St Joseph where we saw the heavy equipment, barge, and tugboat dredging the channel there. We wound up the St Joseph River which leads to South Bend, Indiana, but only got as far as the fuel docks at Pier 33. This was the cheapest diesel fuel at $4.23 a gallon we could find anywhere on the way to Chicago. On our return, we had to sound our horn to get the railroad bridge open for us to get out to Lake Michigan.

We passed more steep sand dunes and a huge nuclear power plant on the coast a long the way. When we reached the harbor, it was marked with three lighthouses. There were small “red on the right” and “green on the left” lighthouses on either side of the stone jetty. Then set back a little, there was a larger red and white lighthouse which was the original one that had been manned by a lighthouse keeper. We have seen the raised black iron railings in previous harbors, but just figured out that for sure that the super structure was a walkway that the light house keeper could walk out when the waves were breaking over the concrete pier. The walkway was really high over the water, so it would be pretty intimidating to have to use it.

It was only another 20 miles to New Buffalo where we are docking tonight. The guide book said that the name of the city was given by Wessell Whittaker who was a merchant sea captain who lost his schooner in a storm on Lake Michigan and washed ashore here in 1834. He was from Buffalo, and claimed the land and named it after his home. We got in and docked in one the transient slips we had been assigned over the phone. Our brief walk around town found lots of brand new designer townhouses, small shops and restaurants but everything was almost like a ghost town. The lady at the Chocolate shop where we got a cup of coffee said things had really slowed down after Labor Day. We walked down to the beach to drink our coffee/mocha and to see the sunset over the water. It was beautiful.