Day 53 up Lake Michigan to Racine, Wisconsin

     We left the dock at DuSable Harbor this morning at 5:40 am - ouch!!! Ouch indeed as this was after taking Lucky for her morning walk in the park. The route today is 62.3 miles, and we should be there by early to mid afternoon.  The alarm woke us all up this morning. The photo at the right shows a beautiful sunrise over Lake Michigan as we are pulling out of the marina. The skyline to the left of the Sun is one of the famous landmarks of the Chicago lake front, Navy Pier. There are thunderstorms forecast for early evening and for the next several days. Thus, we wanted to beat the storms to the Reef Point Marina in Racine, WI where Lucky and I will be staying while Terry travels back to Texas.  The Admiral will fly out of Milwaukee on Saturday, and she will return on the 7th of June.  The main reason for the trip is to attend her nephews wedding in Austin on June 4th, but she will also be able to attend Grandson Will's graduation from Kindergarten (oh, poor me for not being able to go along!). 

     The photo at the left shows the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse as we are going out the main channel through the break water. This classic view of the lighthouse is now seen mainly by pleasure boaters as the big lake freighters have not come to Chicago proper for many years. Most of the industry is now south and east of the city and is accessed through other harbors. 

     The photo at the right is looking back west and shows part of the spectacular Chicago skyline. The black skyscraper on the far right is the John Hancock Building, aka "Big John" with its distinctive twin broadcast towers. At the far left the Sun is reflecting off of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower).

      The photo at the left shows the end of Navy Pier looking back towards downtown Chicago. Seeing the end of Navy Pier brightly lit by the (very) early morning Sun is a rare view of it. At this point we are just beyond the breakwater that forms the outer harbor, and we have set the autopilot to follow the pre-programmed trip to Racine, WI.

     At this point Lucky is already asleep in her kennel on the flybridge, and we are ready to have breakfast, which was delayed so that we could have this very early departure. We did have a fly or two (thousand) hitch a ride which was a little bit of a nuisance but they also attracted some birds which made it worth while. We saw a green warbler or fly catcher as well as red winged blackbirds. Lucky spends a lot of time trying to catch flies with some success. However, when she was on her mat on the control console, she tried to catch fly on the screen of the chartplotter. The "fly" that she was trying to catch was the boat icon that shows the position of the boat on the screen. Yup, it was pretty funny to watch, but there were nose prints on the screen after she gave up...

     Our trip was pretty uneventful with no traffic on the lake. So we will jump ahead to our arrival in Racine. We arrived at the Reef Point Marina at 1 pm.  At Racine we entered the harbor and were in the Root River that flows through downtown Racine and were almost immediately at the entrance to our marina (photo above). There are several boat yards up the river that require that one or two bridges be raised to get to them. However, the City of Racine has built this wonderful marina and surrounding park on fill out into the lake. We stayed here on our first Loop, and we chose to come back here for out extended stay while the Admiral takes her trip back to Texas.  The brown building on the right is a condo, while the low building in the center and left is a hotel. Downtown Racine is in the background.

      As we were turning to enter the marina, we passed the rather classic looking tug Kristina J moored in the marina. Sorry folks, but I cannot pass up a good photo of a tug for Grandson Will.

      Out the other side of the boat we were passing this barge in the photo at the left. They are doing some work on the break wall for the outer harbor.  Yes, I was rushing back and forth taking pictures, but we were going at idle speed with the autopilot turned on so I could afford a "few" seconds away from the helm to take pictures.

     When we checked in at the office, we received the good news that the new pool with two hot tubs open tomorrow!  They have all been refurbished with new plaster and coping around the edges so I will be set for some pool time in between working on Lucky Us and walking Lucky. Good news indeed!