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Good morning Fisher-folks!  I heard this story today about the salmon are beginning to swim up stream for spawning.  What stream?  Bear River!!  Bear River empties within the Petoskey Marina basin.

Looking downstream – Bear River

You don’t see any jumping salmon, do you?  I figure that if I took pictures, one might just sneak through.

Swirling water around boulders – Bear River

Wayne standing by the spillway that the salmon have to jump over

We have been by several times in the last week and have not seen any jumping salmon.  It may be too soon in the season.  Don’t tell these fishing folk that it is too soon.  I counted as many as a dozen poles and fishing line in the water at the same time.  How do they keep their lines from getting tangled?  THEN the guy I was standing by said “FISH!!”.  I assume to alert everyone else he had something on his hook.  Yep.  A fish.  Then it broke the line and went swimming away.

Fishing-folk lining up on both sides of the spillway … hoping

I saw a path that ran along the Bear River.  I had to walk on it.  Just to see where it went.  It was a lovely little walk.  Unbeknownst to me, I was walking on the North Country Trail.

Trail along the Bear River bank

Trail marker!  I could walk a trail from New York to North Dakota?  Who knew??

Sign found across the steel foot bridge spanning the Bear River

Isn’t this a lovely picture.  The trail.  The river.  Peaceful.  Serene.

Good morning, it is walkabout time!  Got your shoes on?  Let’s go into town and see what we can find that might be interesting to you folks.  Yes, we found the ice-cream place twice.  It was uphill both times.  Worth the effort!

Every town has one of these.  It seems that along the way, we see lots of cannon.  This cannon looks in pretty good shape.

Cannon in a city park

I couldn’t read the historical plate.  I could read this slug… IX IN 1859.  I assume it is a 9 inch cannon made in 1859?  Of course I looked in it!!  It had a wooden stump half burned out.  Plugged.  Wonder if this town still has balls and powder?!

The town has a couple of water fountains scattered up and down the main street.  I find this town a very very dog friendly town.  It is the only town where dog bowls are standard.

Dog bowl right along with the human water fountain.

The dog bowl water always looked fresh and clean.  Someone loves dogs in this town!

At the Petoskey Marina, a dog dish and water fountain.

A new feature every sail boater here and the marina wants to see.  A cormorant sitting on top of a mast.  A new learning skill for the bird.  We have seen gulls and osprey.  Never one of these birds.  They typically are on the water, on the back of a boat sunning itself.  Not on top of a sailboat mast.  A sailboater down the way was very upset with the bird poop all over his boat.  Nature always finds a way!

We had dinner at Duffy’s Garage & Grill during our stay here.  Great beer.  Good pub food. This light fixture?  Made with spark plugs.  Thus the garage theme?!?!

Duff’s Garage & Grill Restaurant

Tomorrow promises to be a day of travel.  RWW looks perfect! (Rain, Waves, and Wind)  We have heard from a number of Loopers that where ever they are now, they are on Lake Michigan in the morning and moving toward Chicago.  No wind. No wave. No Rain.  COLD – 47°F first thing in August!  The sun will be out and will warm our day to low 70°Fs.  Perfect day to be on the water.

 (maybe scattered fog but don’t say it too loud and it won’t happen)

Sunset in Petoskey, MI

Good Morning!  It is a windy day today.  Just like yesterday and tomorrow.  However, we will find things to do and have fun times here in Petoskey, MI.

These guys can’t read…No Public Entry!!

We are borrowing the Petoskey Marina’s bicycles today to run an errand or two.  A trip to Walgreens and a grocery store about 2.5 miles away sounds daunting by foot, but very doable by bike.  These are 1-speed bikes.  Perfect for us old folks who haven’t been on bicycles in years and years.  At least we should remember how to use the coaster brakes.  Well, maybe.

Wayne on a bike in front of me.

Trying to photograph Wayne with one hand and the other hand on the handlebar made me wander into the grass and bushes.  If anyone was watching, they would have thought I was new to bikes or drunk.  I couldn’t hold a straight line.  Always over correcting.  Jeez.  I really had to concentrate when other bikes came by us.  “Don’t look at them” I kept saying to myself so I wouldn’t steer toward them.  I had a couple of near-misses.  I finally pulled over and let them pass than try to figure out how to not steer right at them!  Glad Wayne didn’t have a camera when he was following me.

The Little Traverse Wheelway is a very nice biking trail that goes along the waterfront from Charlevoix to Harbor Springs ( 26 miles ).  The “No Teaming or Driving” along the Wheelway goes back to the time when horses and horse/buggies were driven along the same path. No, we did not see any horses today!

Little Traverse Wheelway – biking trail

We found our way to Walgreens off the wheelway and behind a couple of buildings.  See…there they are!

Bikes taking a rest from 2 Old Coots riding them Harley style

The Bikes found KFC on the way to the grocery store

You saw the backpack Wayne on his back?  Between his backpack and mine limits the amount of shopping.  A couple of heads of lettuce, cheese, sandwich fixings, and apples.  Done.  No more space.  A rather interesting way to limit your spending.  An idea to promote.  Save money, ride a bike to the grocery store!

Fish sculpture seen on the bike path

HUMOR of the day….

Wayne told me you couldn’t really see the dog silhouettes very well in my previous posting.  How about this one with Geese all around the cardboard dog?  What dog?  I don’t see no dog, do you?

This just makes me smile.  Nature knows.

How about cute?

Swallows having a conversation

Another storm comes through…..

During a windy but beautiful sunny day here in Petoskey, I walked around the marina to and took pictures.  I had to hold on to my hat so it wouldn’t blow off into the bay.

Metal picnic benches are located around the marina.  I think it is great they leave a hole in the bench for wheelchairs and such.  How convenient.  The color is also the best.

Flower beds around the marina

One this sunny day, I realized the ducks weren’t in the water.  I found them all hunkered down on the small dock near the boat ramp.  All in a row.  Is this not the cutest.  If the ducks aren’t in the water, why should we?!  Nature always knows.

Ducks waiting for the storm to pass

Humor of the day:  On the west side of the marina are condominiums.  There is also a small grass area and a sandy beach.  How lovely.  Then I noticed the cardboard silhouettes of dogs along the grass.  I think that is supposed to keep the geese from landing on the grass.  We saw a group of geese on the grass behind the silhouettes.  They probably climbed up on the sandy beach side and walked behind the fake dogs.  After all, the dogs didn’t run after them.  Nature knows.

WEATHER LESSON:

My favorite wave height website is “Passageweather.com”  They allow you to zoom into the particular region of the world and show you wind speed and wave height.  They get their numbers from NOAA as most all applications and software in the USA.  We like the visual of the maps.  We have had 1 in 4 days that is passable but not long enough to get farther than 40 miles.  That would put us on the edge of Lake Michigan with the very high winds/waves.

NOTE:  09 UTC is actually 5am in the morning.  Wave height is in Meters!!

If I read this map correctly, it indicates <0.25 Meter ( <1 ft ) of waves at 5am in the morning on Tuesday Aug 18, 2015.  Sounds pretty good.  We generally see these kinds of wave height maps from 11 pm – 5am.  We have considered cruising at night but decided if the locals didn’t do it, we shouldn’t either.

Tuesday 8-17-15

However, this is what happens soon after:

1.5 – 2.0 Meter high waves are expected in our little area of Lake Michigan.  That is 2-6 feet!!  In real terms, that means every so often there are 8 – 12 foot waves.

Thursday August 20, 2015 – 15UTC is 11am

For you folks that like visuals, here is another fantastic website I just found.  If you zoom into the Great Lakes – Lake Michigan area, you can see the winds coming our way.  You can zoom in on your particular area and see what is happening in your neighborhood.  Mesmerizing, I tell you!!  You could spend minutes or even hours just watching the wind change directions.  www.windyty.com

Here is a screen shot for your amusement:

http://www.windyty.com

We have been in contact with other Loopers who have ventured during some of these high wind/wave days.  They described their travels south along the eastern coast line was “lumpy”, “rough”, or “bumpy”.  Lumpy??  Rough??  4-6 ft waves?  Yes, indeed.  We don’t want to repeat the bronco bull ride we had in Georgian Bay.  We will wait a little longer.  Surely, the lake will calm down enough for us to transit.  Surely…

Another Storm coming in

Good Morning!  We are still in Petosky, MI.  We picked this particular marina because we knew some winds and weather were on their way.  It looked like this would be a great place to escape the forecasted 15 – 20 mph winds with 35 – 40 mph gusts.

You can see that Petoskey is inside the coast line.  The winds are expected from the South West.  Waves are expected to be over 4 feet high.  We opted to stay at this protected marina for the next few days rather than go southward to Charlevoix or Leland.  They are right on the edge of the lake may have 5 -10 mph higher winds.  We just didn’t want to get beat up.  So we wait.

Upper Lake Michigan coast

When we arrived on Saturday, there was a festival going on.  We couldn’t find out what they were celebrating but we figured it was a beautiful day and that should be enough. We found the walkway to Downtown:

We walked up hill to see what we could see.  Imagine my surprise that the first store we saw as a tattoo parlor!  hahaha  Then several small bistros and restaurants, a general store selling exotic cheeses and meats, and finally the ice-cream store.  Guess what was for dinner?

So we wouldn’t get lost on our way back to the marina, the sign to the Midway area next to the Marina.

Midway leads to the Marina

Sometimes, the street view is clogged with cars and people.  This is a Sat/Sunday and filled with families on vacation.  We walked back to the marina on a back street to avoid the crowds and gas fumes.  The stores also labeled their backdoors so you can get to their shops and diners just as easily as from the front street.  How convenient!

Back street signage so you know where you are going.

On my way for the evening picture, these two neighbors of mine just squawked up a storm.  You would think I was moving in.

These guys didn’t seem to mind us humans.  In fact, they tried to avoid us as much as possible.

One evening sunset picture…

Sunset August 16th – folks walking along the breakwater just outside of the marina

The sunset picture on the 20th of August.

Sunset – August 20th – from our Flybridge