Ludington, MI to Manitowoc, WI

As forecasted, Lake Michigan finally settled down and gave us a pass to head south to Ludington.

As with so many other marinas in Michigan, our size was an issue at the Municipal Marina. Shorter boats were able to get a slip, we were offered a space on the wall. This wasn’t a big issue for us. We still had power and water, but it also put us along the walking path for locals and tourists. Maggie, being the greeter that she is, felt she needed to let us know about everyone walking past especially those who had a dog.

One of the things we have loved about towns in Michigan has been the pride people take in their communities. All of the towns have been adorned with welcoming flower baskets and gardens. Ludington is no exception. Here, volunteers plant 30,000 red, white and blue petunia along Ludington Avenue creating the Petunia Parade, thus inviting you to stroll from the lakeside through town.

Ludington is also home to the SS Badger, the last coal-fired passenger steamship in operation in the US. She makes a daily run from Ludington to Manitowoc, Wi and back ferrying passengers and vehicles. Every morning we hear her announce her departure from Ludington at 9am. She returns from Manitowoc at 7pm. One evening we joined many others for the return.

As she turns, she drops her anchor, using it to pivot as she backs into her mooring.

Lots of fishing going on here too.

I also decided that somebody was due a bath.

And of course, we had to check out the breweries.

We really enjoyed the few days we had in Ludington. Our Harbor Hosts, Rose and Dave were wonderful and we were able to spend some time with other loopers. Hopefully we’ll meet up with many of them as we head down the rivers.

Looming over us for days was the decision of when to cross over Lake Michigan. As we have learned, the Lake can be quite fickle as her moods swing. The forecast was leaning toward OK, not great, but OK to cross on Saturday, August 7 and we were leaning toward accepting it. However, there was also a forecast of a storm on the Wisconsin side. The math said at 8 mph for a 60 mi trip, we should be over in 7 1/2 hours. The storm was scheduled to hit around 4-5pm. There ain’t no speeding this slow, fat trawler up, so we either had to trust the weatherman that we could beat the storm or we had to forego this window and wait several days for another.

We chose to go for it. Off the wall around 7 am, we started out pretty good. We were all pretty chill. Somewhere past halfway, things got a bit rougher.

When we had a couple hours to go, the washing machine waves began in earnest. It was not the crossing we hoped for, but it could worse. That big green blob of a storm held off until 6 or so, well after we settled in.

Welcome to Wisconsin! We’re taking it slow as we head down and have time to kill. We made a decision early on that we didn’t want to hit the rivers until after Labor Day. I’ll tell you about Manitowoc and Sheboygan in my next post and then we’ll be off to Port Washington, Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and lastly Chicago before we leave Lake Michigan.