A New Plane

The owner of the campground bought a small sport plane. These kinds of planes are smaller than the normal private planes but larger than an ultralight flyer. You can fly "sport planes" without having to pass a tough medical exam. They fly pretty high and fairly fast just like their bigger cousins. The downside is these planes are very small. They look like they have a backseat but you would have to be a pygmy to fit in the back.

The owner bought the plane that has wheels. Jim saw the one with floats and loved it. Too bad these little planes cost over $100,000. Jim will get to take a ride with the owner and even get to fly it. We think the owner is trying to bribe us to come back next year by offering Jim the chance to go flying.

The new marina is coming along -- we've lost count of how many barge loads of rock they have dumped into the water to make the new pier.

Washington Island

We finally took the ferry across to Washington Island. You see Jim;s back as we head out to cross Death's Door passage to the island. It was a beautiful day with almost no wind so the ride over was wonderful. The ferry from Northport to Detroit Harbor carries passangers as well as cars. We opted to take our bikes and bike around the island. The island has about 6 miles of paved roads. Many people take their cars but most ride the "cherry train" for a tour around the island. You can also rent mopeds and putter around which we wish we would have done. We only biked about half the island. We didn't like riding against the wind uphill. There isn't much to really see there. Some stores, places to eat and places to stay but all very small.

We ate at a restaurant that advertised fresh "lawyers". The owners are commercial fishermen and they fry up and serve what they catch. We thought we might as well give the "eelpout/lawyer/burbot" a try. It wasn't bad -- they served it in very small fried pieces. They had many stuffed fish on the walls -- not a good idea to see what the fish really looks like that you are eating.

September has been warmer here so far than most of August. There is a bumper crop of blackberries all around the campground and they've been very tasty snacks. We are hoping to get in a little more fishing as long as it stays warm before we pack everything up for the trip south.

More Lighthouses

Now that it is quieter we went out to Cana Island Lighthouse. It is the picture of the lighthouse without water in it. This lighthouse is about halfway up the peninsula between Sturgeon Bay and the tip. It is the only one you can climb up into if you want -- almost 100 steps- we didn't opt to go up.

We also finally got to go out on the pier where the coast guard station is and the Sturgeon Bay Canal dumps out into Lake Michigan. You can see the mouth of the canal to the left of the station and lighthouse. There were also some very nice fish swimming close to the pier. They say you can even catch trout here in the spring and fall.

Jim got a picture of some baby Cedar Wax Wings hiding in the sumac. They were too big for their nest but they couldn't really fly much yet. They were sitting on a branch waiting for Mom to come and feed them.

A New Marina for Egg Harbor

We survived the Labor Day weekend onslaught of campers. There were close to a thousand people in the campground and most were nice -- some were rude -- but at least the campground was never noisy. We finally saw some nice walleyes that were caught by a group of campers staying here. We got some great pointers on how to catch them. They actually troll in water very deep to shallow 20 to 90 feet -- very different than in Minnesota. So we put in an order from Cabelas to get a few new supplies that will help us catch them the way they do it here.

The pictures I am showing are of the equipment and rock that was brought by barge to Egg Harbor. The citizens of Egg Harbor voted to repair and expand their marina to the tune of 6.5 million dollars. They will be tearing down the old pier (in the front of the picture) and pouring rock for a new one. They will be adding five times as many slips for boats and they already have them filled. People are on waiting lists for years around here to get a slip.

While the tugs were getting the barges pushed into place in the harbor there were all kinds of pleasure boats cruising around them. It was still a busy day on the water Labor Day. The weather was perfect and there was hardly any wind so it was perfect for boating. We did hear that the Coast Guard was searching the waters off of one of the islands for a body. Someone had fallen overboard and they were searching and of course there were many boats out watching the proceedings.