September 5, 2008: Leland, Michigan

We stayed tied up in the marina this morning for me to get some work done, and then at 11:00 AM we were preparing to cast off. The sun had come out and it looked like it was going to be a pretty day; however, the American flag at the Marina was still standing out straight. We consulted with the NOAA website for Lake Michigan that was projecting winds from 10-15 knots with gusts to 25. We were still considering moving on, but Tom went up to the fly bridge and could see the white caps beyond breakfront. Reluctantly, he decided maybe we should not venture out on the Lake today.

But the warm sunny (windy) day gave us another day to explore Leland. We walked back through Fishing Town and took pictures of the Falling Waters Lodge and the water fall on the Carp River. We stood in line to buy fresh white fish at the little shanty by the fishing boats. The very old, weathered man weighting the fish said that they were very fresh, and we could see fishermen in the back at a table filleting the day’s catch. They were selling smoked fish as well which I was not too sure about, but the people in front of us bought some. They told us that the stone jetty that protected the harbor was never built to be a marina. It was intended to be anchorage for fishing boats, and cost $880,000 when it was built in 1960.

And we walked back up the Carp River to the Leelanau Museum nestled between the clear green water of the river and behind a row of healthy looking trees with strangely black leaves. The had an exhibit with a real wigwam built from maple tree saplings and birch bark showing how the native people would have constructed homes.. The wigwam was full of thick luxurious fur skins, maybe fox or beaver, which gave the exhibit a sense of reality of how you could survive a winter that way.

They also had a exhibit celebrating the antique wooden boats of the area including a video of some of them. These were beautiful 4 passenger teak boats which were built right before the depression or just after the boat manufacturer, Chris Craft, switched from making PT boats for the US Army to making pleasure craft. For our day imprisoned in port, we treated ourselves to dinner at the Blue Bird restaurant on the river. While we were eating, we actually saw one of the boats from the video cruise down the river. We also saw a bevy of red winged black birds on a bird feeder on the lawn.

After dinner, the wind had died down enough that a 110 foot yacht, the Mitch Mate III, had joined us at the pier. It is the largest boat we have seen in a while, and the thing that made it stand out the most was not the ski boat it had as a dinghy, but rather the late ’50 two door, red Studebaker auto on the top deck. You just have to smile at the toys.