Downtime at Greal Lakes Marina

The weather on launch day was picture perfect – blue skies, calm winds, temperature in the 70’s.  Unfortunately, it was short-lived. The following day brought a dip in temperatures and a high wind advisory for gusty winds topping out at 40+ miles per hour!   That evening we were serenaded by the staccato rhythm of the straining lines and the squeal of the fenders as they rubbed against the dock.  Welcome aboard. . . .

 

The weather for the remainder of that week was marginally better.  The winds died down to a more manageable 20 miles per hour but the daytime temperatures hovered around 50⁰.  The sun doesn’t set here in western Michigan until well after 9 PM but the increase in daylight did nothing for the evening temperatures.  It was downright cold – winter by Virginia standards.  In fact, there were snow flurries on the Upper Peninsula!

The unrelenting winds at Great Lakes Marina kept the flags snapping at the fuel dock behind Lazy W.

 

 

Dune Climb Stairway



 

A 90^th birthday party in Pennsylvania for my Aunt Joan, too much wind for crossing Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, innumerable boat maintenance issues and a dockage rate that we could not pass up kept us in a three-week holding pattern at Muskegon’s Great Lakes Marina.  Needing a break from boat chores, we visited P.J. Hoffmaster State Park which features over three miles of sandy beach along the Lake Michigan shoreline, numerous hiking trails and the 193-step Dune Climb Stairway atop the park’s largest parabolic dune.   Unlike the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge on the Outer Banks, this 190-foot tall dune is lush with vegetation along its sheltered back. 

Trillium in bloom on the forest floor



Lake Michigan from the top of the Dune Climb Stairway

 



 

Another highlight of our stay in Muskegon was a lunchtime visit to Courses, the eatery at the Culinary Institute of Michigan.  We have really come to love these student-run restaurants – the menus are always unique, the food is exceptional, the servers are welcoming and exuberant.  And the price – well, think cordon bleu at a family diner price.  Courses lived up to our expectations and will warrant a return visit.



Culinary Institute of Michigan - Muskegon campus

 


A Saturday afternoon bike ride meandered along the shore of Muskegon Lake with a well-deserved stop at happy hour at the Shoreline Inn.  Nearby is the large stainless steel and concrete sculpture Sails Ablaze.  Dedicated in 2016, the sculpture commemorates the two-masted fore-and-aft schooner Lyman M. Davis.  After the great Chicago fire of 1871, there was an urgent need for lumber to rebuild the city.  The schooner was built in Muskegon (near where the sculpture sits) and, upon its completion, she made as made as three weekly round trips transporting lumber from the mills on Muskegon Lake to Chicago.  The fastest schooner on the Great Lakes, she sailed Lake Michigan for decades before being set ablaze for ‘amusement’ in Toronto harbor in 1934.  Born of fire, died by fire – Sails Ablaze.

Sails Ablaze

 



Lyman M Davis



 

A main attraction on the Muskegon waterfront is the Gato-class submarine, U.S.S. Silversides.  Launched in 1941, the sub received twelve battle stars for its service in World War II.  It sank 23 enemy ships, the third most of any allied WWII submarine.  Silversides was the site of a Memorial Day Lost Boat Ceremony honoring the crews of the 55 submarines that were lost in WWII.  The event started with a War Birds Fly-By courtesy of The Hooligans Flight Team and ended with the ‘lighting off’ of one of the submarine’s 1500-horsepower Fairbanks Morse diesel engines.  (Yes, all you SUNY Maritime engineers out there, the engines are still in working condition and are started up for special occasions several times a year!)  In between the fly-by and the engine startup, two WWII submarine veterans solemnly read the names of the 55 lost subs and the Coast Guard laid a memorial wreath in the channel.

It was striking to hear how many men were lost on each of the 55 submarines.  As the name of each submarine was read, the ship’s bell tolled and a carnation was tossed into the channel.  A twenty-one gun salute followed.

 

On June 2^nd we flew out of Gerald R Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids bound for Philadelphia and the not-to-be-missed birthday party/family reunion of 2017.  On the drive to the airport Frank and I reminisced about our last experience at the then Kent County International Airport. It was Thanksgiving weekend 1977 and the reason I remember this so well almost 40 years later?  We were young, living in Stevensville Michigan and we had the bright idea to travel back to New York to spend Thanksgiving with the family. I was pregnant with Jonathan. We should have been smart enough to realize that late November was not the best time of year to make that trip – winter starts early along Lake Michigan and we had to fly across the lake to Chicago and then on to New York’s Kennedy Airport.  That leg of the trip went without any hassles – it was the return trip that did not go so well.  Mother Nature chose to drop ten inches of windblown snow over southwestern Michigan the day we left New York.  We landed in Chicago and then waited and waited and waited for the flight to Benton Harbor/St. Joe.  Instead, we were flown to Grand Rapids and then DRIVEN BY A CRAZY CABBIE over 80 miles during the height of the storm to the airport in Benton Harbor!?!? And toting a bag full of onion and garlic New York bagels that had me feeling queasy since we had left NY!?!? (For the life of me, I cannot imagine why I did not dump those stinkin’ things in the trash in Chicago – our Michigan friends would have understood!) And the adventure did not stop there as our VW bug was buried in snow with a dead battery.  But that is another long story for another time...

Aunt Joan, the only one of my father’s seven siblings still with us, turned 90 this year and it was time to celebrate the occasion.  Her three children, Anne, Peter and Margaret, hosted a wonderful party at the retirement community where Aunt Joan lives.  It was well attended by her family and friends.  We all agreed that it was great to reconnect with all the cousins.

My siblings and their spouses with Aunt Joan

Me (cousin #5), Frank, Bob (#1), Aunt Joan, Kathy (Bob’s wife), Marian (#25), George (#11), and Jim (Marian’s husband)

Bob reveals to Aunt Joan that she was his ‘first crush’ – as an infatuated ten-year-old he firmly believed they had a bright and happy future together!!

Aunt Joan, the last of my dad’s surviving siblings, is held in high regard by her 36 Buckheit nieces and nephews.  Twenty-one of those attended the party and we lined up in numerical order – my brother Bob has the distinction of being #1 while I made the top five.  Anne (in front of me), Peter (first guy to her left) and Margaret (kneeling, far left) hosted their mom’s party.  A heartfelt thanks to all of them.

And here we all are (in true numerical order) in 1967 with Grandma Buckheit.  At that time, there were ONLY 29 of us!

Now we are back on Lazy W waiting for the perfect weather window for crossing Lake Michigan to Milwaukee.  Maybe Thursday…

 

 

 

 

 

 



 



 

On the Road Again

 

 

ON

THE

ROAD

AGAIN

2017

 

 

 

 

 

On the road again,

Just can’t wait to get on the road again.

Goin’ places that I’ve never been…

 

Another great winter at the Virginia Beach oceanfront was coming to an end on April 31^st.  It was time to reunite with Lazy W in Muskegon, MI.  But wait – there was still much to accomplish during that last week. . .

Our plan to keep Lazy W on Lake Michigan for the next few summers means that we have no place of our own to call home once boating season is over.  Spending winter at the oceanfront, while an awesome experience, is getting old. Before leaving for Michigan we signed the paperwork to secure an apartment in Norfolk’s Bank of America building which is being transformed into the ICON Apartments.  Hopefully, the apartment will be ready for occupancy by November and hopefully the apartment meets our expectations – we only had floor plans at our disposal for making our decision to live there. C’est la vie!

After much deliberation, Frank decided to part ways with his 1997 Nissan Maxima with just 165,000 miles on the odometer.  Despite the lack of TLC given to her, the Nissan had been a very reliable car over the 14 years we owned her.  She was still equipped with her original exhaust system; she readily started up each morning powered by her trusty nine-year-old battery; she had just aced her state safety inspection.  It would be hard to say goodbye.  But within three hours of posting her on craigslist, to our surprise, she was sold!!  In fact, Frank came very close to refereeing a bidding war in the parking lot of Dolphin Run!!

Cramming all the new gear – cooler, charts, zincs, lines, linens, screens, wine and a case of Cocobon – that we had acquired for Lazy W into the trunk of our Toyota Camry proved to be a bit of a challenge. Luckily that trunk holds much more than we ever imagined it would - but not our clothes and personal items.  Let’s fill up that back seat!

May 1^st – time to hit the road.  First stop – Wikanders Boat Yard on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where Stu and Carol welcomed us for our first night on the road.  Then on to Rahway, New Jersey where we hopped on the train to New York City for a sobering visit to the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

Next stop – East Lyme, Connecticut and the home of Rich and Terry Wills.  We celebrated Cinco de Mayo at Mohegan Sun Casino where the girls blew $5 each on the slots before getting overwhelmed by the annoying noise and lights surrounding us.  In our defense, we did play for almost thirty minutes on that $5.

Then on to New Windsor, New York where we spent a few days with my 92-year-old mom.  She still lives independently in a four-level townhouse.  Amazing!  While there, we enjoyed dinner with my sister Marian and her husband Jim and then took a short side trip to Saugerties to reminisce with friends from college days – Bob and Lee.

 

 

The remainder of our route west to Muskegon, Michigan would take us through Niagara Falls.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the temperature rising as we headed north on the New York State Thruway - it had been so windy and chilly since we left Virginia. We stayed in a hotel on the New York side within walking distance of the falls and Savor, the restaurant run by the students of the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute.  YUMMY! 

 

We crossed into Canada over the Rainbow Bridge without having to answer any of the questions that are asked of boaters crossing the border.  No questions about the amount of alcohol we were carrying? (Phew!) No questions about any beef/chicken/fruits/vegetables?  Only questions about weapons we might be smuggling into Canada.  We were waved through customs in a matter of minutes.  A few hours later we had driven across Ontario and were crossing back to the U.S. over the Blue Water Bridge linking Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan.  And again, the only question asked of us concerned the transporting of weapons.

 

Next stop – Grand Rapids, Michigan where we toured the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum dedicated to all things concerning the life and times of the 38^th president.  Ford, often called the ‘accidental’ president, governed with personal integrity and unbending adherence to the truth at a time in U.S. history when the office of the president had been tainted with scandal.  The walls and exhibits are filled with quotes from Ford and with praise from historians extolling his “art of intelligent compromise with low-key Midwestern habits of fairness, civility and truthtelling.”  One columnist, Mort Kondracke, noted “Gerald Ford represented the best in American politics. . .and a style that I’m afraid we are never going to see again.”  A visitor cannot help but contrast such style with that of today’s politicians from either political party.

 

Ford was a center on the University of Michigan football team and was MVP in 1034.  This sculpture sits outside the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.

 By Friday, May 12^th we had finally arrived in Muskegon.  We had turned what could have been an 800-mile road trip from Virginia to Lazy W into a 1,600-mile road trip!  And we would do it all again. . .

 

Since Lazy W wasn’t scheduled for her splashdown until Monday, May 15^th and the dry storage building at Great Lakes Marina wasn’t open on Sunday, the Captain could only do his pre-splashdown prep on Saturday.  That left Sunday as a play day.  It was a beautiful sunny day so we hit the road and drove south on US-31 to Holland for the last day of the Tulip Festival.

Holland was settled by the Dutch in 1847.  Dutch heritage is evident throughout the town especially in early May when the millions of tulips are in bloom everywhere – on the city streets, in the parks, outside municipal buildings, in the shopping centers and gas stations, and Windmill Island Gardens, home to 100,000 tulips!  May 14^th was the last day of the Tulip Festival and most of the tulips were past their prime viewing time.  However, some varieties were still pretty spectacular. 

 The main year-round attraction at Windmill Island Gardens is the 250-year-old De Zwaan windmill.  In the mid -1800’s there were close to 9,000 windmills in use in the Netherlands, pumping water off the low-lying land and grinding grain into flour.  This windmill was used as a lookout in the Netherlands during World War II and served as a hideout for two Dutch Jewish men escaping the invading Nazis. (An original blade with bullet holes from the Nazis is on display at the foot of the windmill.)  Only about 900 windmills survived the devastation of that war.  De Zwaan was dismantled and shipped to Holland in 1964, the last windmill the Dutch government allowed to leave the Netherlands.

  

Also on site is a working Amsterdam street organ.  Built in 1928 by the famous Dutch organ maker Carl Frei, De Vier Kolommen (The Four Columns) was presented to the city of Holland in 1947 by the city of Amsterdam “in gratitude for the role of the United States in liberating the Netherlands in World War II.”  During a short demonstration, the organ cranked out a medley of Beach Boys tunes!

De Viet Kolommen

 

Then the moment we had been anxiously waiting for finally arrived.  As scheduled on May 15^th, Lazy W was loaded on a big trailer, towed out of her winter home, transferred to the cradle of the travel lift, and plopped into the water.  Her engines started right up, all systems were given the okay by the captain and Lazy W was released from the sling.  We cruised about 100 feet to our slip, docked and began the cleanup process.  After fourteen days of ‘couch-surfing’ and bunking in hotels, it feels great to be ‘home’ again. . .

 

Lazy W being towed to the travel lift

 

Safely transferred to the sling on the travel lift.  Next stop - the water!