We left Northport at 9:45 am since the (Friday) Farmers Market did not open until 9:00 am. I got lucky again and got to sleep in once more. I am beginning to like these mid-week farmers markets that do not open until later. According to one of the vendors, he goes to 5 different towns each week for farmers markets so they must have a regular "tour".
...and so we said goodbye to Northport, Michigan. Yet another pretty little small town (picture at left shows part of downtown). Our trip to Leland, MI was 29.4 miles by water, but it was much shorter in "crow" miles. After 7 miles going north we rounded the point between Grand Traverse Bay and the west coast of Michigan and headed south. After going about 6 miles south, we were only a little over 3 miles west of Northport.
However, once we rounded the point and headed south to Leland, we had large rollers from the west that were left over from a storm two days ago. Good news/bad news. The wind was 5 to 8 mph out of the south with waves less than 1 foot, the rolling old seas from the west were large enough to rock (side to side) Lucky Us for the whole part of the trip in Lake Michigan. The quiet water inside the harbor at Leland was a very welcome sight (picture at right).
Leland is an old fishing town, and it has a nicely restored area along the river that is known as "Fishtown". The flow of water in the old channel is quite swift after it passes over a small dam that separates Fishtown (and Lake Michigan) from a large inland lake. In the picture at the left you can see how closely the small buildings are to both each other and to the water.
Part of fishtown is still operating commercial fishing businesses. The "Janice Sue" is a working gill net fish boat. There were several others on my side of the river and judging from the strong fishy odor, they were also currently working fishing boats. You could buy both fresh perch, salmon and whitefish, as well as smoked whitefish. I really enjoyed this rather quaint little area, and the hundreds of tourists evidently did as well.
There were (displays?) fish nets drying on rollers, where they could also be repaired by hand (picture at left). The individual nets were only 10 or 15 feet high and about 100 feet long. They would have bottom weights to sink to the bottom and the tops were held up by buoys. The nets would be strung together to be a mile or so long.
There were numerous small shops and several restaurant/bars crowded into this very small area (several are in the picture at right). I really liked the ladder on the wall that appeared to lead to a second floor apartment. The buildings were so randomly arranged that I kept losing sight of the Admiral, but sooner or later she would pop out of a shop or come around a corner.
We only toured part of the downtown, but we could not resist going into this store, which was called Hullabaloo. I even took a picture (at left) for our
Aggie friends. Once inside, I did buy some post cards to send to the Grandkids. We also found an excellent restaurant called the Bluebird for an early dinner. The restaurant was more upscale, so we chose to eat in the tavern with a more diverse menu. Having never had clam strips, I made the mistake of ordering them... Let me tell you that fortunately the side salad and the French fries were really good. Lesson learned???
This is the first marina where we have encountered a lot of boats that are doing the Great Loop, and just walking down the dock, they would see our Great Loop burgee and stop to say hello.
We ended the day with a lovely sunset over the breakwater and Lake Michigan.
We will be checking the weather closely both tonight and early tomorrow. At the moment the predictions are for stronger winds and lots of rain in the morning.
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