It's the Fourth of July. Happy Birthday America!
Today we are going 7.5 miles across the Straits of Mackinac to St. Ignace, Michigan. By crossing the Straits we are once again going to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We are also hoping that by going to a much smaller town that we will have less fireworks to upset Lucky... The photo at the right shows Lucky enjoying the 4 to 6 mph breeze and essentially just ripples on the water. There were also the inevitable wakes from ferries and pleasure craft, but she stayed awake most of the one hour trip while her ears flapped in the breeze. We said goodbye to our new friends on the go fast boats. Their reply was something to the effect that you never know when we may see you again... Sure enough, they all were yelling and waving about 5 hours later when they pulled into our marina as it seems they had decided to come over to St Ignace for dinner.
We arrived at St Ignace just before Noon, and the photo at the right shows Lucky Us in her slip all decked out for the Fourth of July. Yes, it is a bit of an over statement to say "all decked out" when we only had the banner on the aft end of the Flybridge. We did have time to change into appropriate clothes before we went to the parade that was down the main waterfront street right in front of the marina. No one seemed to notice that my red, white and blue shirt was actually the state flag of Texas.
It was a really small town parade since the timing was really off. The lead vehicles came past at 1:20 pm, and they were 6 fire engines with lights flashing along with sporadic horns and sirens. The kids were scrambling about to collect candy that was thrown. Someone must have gotten a really good deal on Tootsie Rolls because over the course of the parade at least 90% of the candy was Tootsie Rolls. Then we were treated to our first gap of just several minutes.
The photo at the left shows two typical parade watchers, including my Texas shirt. With only the very gentle breeze it was actually hot in the sun at the parade so we sought shade in front of one of the stores. The parade route covered just over a mile, and it was very well attended.
Since school is out, there was only one "band" and that was the pep band from the local high school. They were very enthusiastic, and no one managed to fall off the packed trailer. Bands are one of my favorite parts of any parade, and I was a little disappointed that there were not more musical groups of any kind. The gaps in the parade continued to lengthen, but we hung in there.
The last photo (at left) from the parade shows a golf cart that was pulling a float. I did not zoom in enough, but the golf cart is owned by "Captain's Quarters - Wash and Dry Dock". We had actually seen this Laundromat a short distance from the marina, and I was fascinated by the name as I think that quarter's and dry dock are marvelous plays on words. After about 40 minutes, we headed for lunch after another 10 minute lapse in the parade. We headed across the street to the Mackinac Grille and got seats in front where we could continue to watch the parade in air conditioned comfort while we waited for our lunch to be served.
We had meals in a total of three restaurants here, and all three had at least 4 of the local fish (whitefish, lake trout, perch, walleye and/or bluegill) on the menus. Not only that, but you usually had a choice of how they were cooked (e.g. broiled, fried or pan fried). Up until here I had been unimpressed by the selection of local fish at literally all of the restaurants that we had eaten at on the Great Lakes. St Ignace certainly has been the exception so far.
The rest of the afternoon involved several walks with Lucky, and the Admiral and I went "shopping" for ice cream... We had dinner at "The Galley", which is another waterfront restaurant with a large selection of local fish. It was a first for me as I had the Lake Trout. It was quite flavorful and had an excellent texture. It did not just fall apart when you cut it like some fish.
We got back to Lucky Us in time to see the sunset from the flybridge (photo at right).We are close to the southern end of the town that wraps about a mile around this small bay to the north. The fireworks display will be on the waterfront at the far right.
The fireworks began at almost 10:30 pm (photo at left), and it was still not totally dark. There were, of course, plenty of other fireworks shot off by locals all around the bay before the main event. The dock master had been right when he said that our view from the flybridge would be one of the best views in town. We took two swivel captains chair out on the back of the flybridge and used light jackets with beach towels over our legs, and it was very comfortable. We left lucky in her kennel under the chart table at the lower helm station and cranked up the volume on the TV to hopefully drown out some of the noise.
I really will not comment further on the fireworks, except to say that the display was unexpectedly good, especially with the reflections off the quiet water of the bay.
The last one is one of my personal favorites...The camera has a huge 1200 mm zoom with an electronic stabilization feature that is truly amazing, especially on extreme zoom. However, it seem that even I can manage to fool the stabilization feature...
One great thing about watching the fireworks from Lucky Us moored at the dock was that after the show was over, all we had to do was go below and crawl into bed after a long but wonderful day!
No comments:
Post a Comment