Time flies when you are having fun and our time here along Lake Michigan just zoomed by. We were having so much fun I simply forgot to write our blog. Oops!
Up until today, the weather was great but the water got a bit too cold to go swimming. The winds that piped up stirred the water up and brought into shore the deep cold water that sits under the thermocline. Usually, a nice warm layer of water sits on top of the cold, deeper water. It is nice and warm due to the sun and air warming it up during the summer months. However, during the winter and during heavy winds in the summer, the warm layer gets jumbled up with the cold water and the thermocline disappears. That is what has happened during the last couple of days.
Nevertheless, the return of the cold water did not prevent Mary Margaret and I enjoying the beach and the water views. We miss being on the water so much that just being able to see it and even watch the various pleasure craft motoring or sailing by was so great.
We also returned to the blueberry farm to buy another 5 pounds of blueberries and more yellow squash and zucchini. We bagged and froze the blueberries so we will have lots of them whenever we want.
We also spent time at the Michigan Maritime Museum. Located in South Haven, at the mouth of the Black River, it is set up at the former location of the US Coast Guard’s boatyard. Not only is there an indoors museum but they also have a number of stored boats and an 1810 built merchant ship. Friends Good Will was built in Michigan at River Rouge. In the summer of 1812, she was chartered by the federal government to take military supplies to Fort Dearborn, a small military and trading post at what is now Chicago.
She was returning with furs and skins when she was lured into the harbor of Mackinac Island. The British, having taken the island just days before, were flying false colors above the fort ramparts. The British confiscated the vessel, cargo, and crew, renaming her Little Belt. She was armed, taken into service, and fought with the Royal Navy until September of 1813, when she was recaptured by United States Commodore Oliver Perry at the Battle of Lake Erie. Within an hour after the great guns fell silent, Commodore Perry mentioned her in his now famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours: Two Ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” That sloop was Friends Good Will.
Normally, the sloop would go out onto Lake Michigan twice a day during the summer, taking visitors to the Museum on a ride. However, with small craft warnings still flying the ship was grounded. However, we were invited on board to tour it. We were its only visitors so we got a personal tour. I am posting the various photos of Friends Good Will.
As we were onboard, we were notified of a tornado warning and, when we returned to the deck from down below, we saw black clouds racing overhead. Gulp! We returned to our little Fiat and drove in the opposite direction of the black clouds, which took us to Meijer’s, a great supermarket superstore. Way back in the 1973, when we lived in Ann Arbor, we used to shop at one of the Meijer’s stores. I believe Meijer’s was the first superstore in the US, predating what Walmart has become.
When we finished shopping, we were greeted with a deluge of rain. Mary Margaret offered to brave the downpour to retrieve our car while I stood nice and dry with our provisions. Once loaded, we returned to LeuC and our campground to finish sitting out the rain. It rained all night and was still raining when it was time to bundled up LeuC and head off to our next campground, North Higgins Lake State Park, well up in Northern Michigan’s lower peninsula.
Going Down The Road With The Leu's 
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Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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