Beaver Fever

Beaver Island, we have arrived!
At one of the numerous public beach accesses in the harbor

No, we didn't pick up a case of the dreaded beaver fever from the water (something I followed up on regularly back in my working days, and something I know way too much about ;)) But we did find an island that we could spend a lot more time on.

After waiting out some dodgy weather and taking the earliest window we could, we finally made it to Beaver Island. The weather wasn't really cooperating and for a little while I didn't think we'd be able to make it but, alas, we did! The forecast was calling for some wind and waves building across the lake but instead we were faced with some decent rollers from all the wind the day before and not even enough wind to keep the sails full. I think Ron unfurled and furled the headsail at least five or six times trying to see if it would help even a little bit but in about 10 minutes he'd be rolling it back in mumbling about the incessant flopping of the sails. So we motored. And motored. But we made it.

I was excited to check out the (free) museums talking about the island's interesting, and even strange, history. Ron was not. He made it through the museums in record time by "looking at some of the pictures".

Main Street along the bay, watch out for traffic! 

The museum is the white building down at the far end.

We were tempted to stay for the big music festival going on the next weekend but 1) we'd like to keep moving and 2) it wasn't cheap to attend @ $40 per person per night. Ouch. Besides, the island is supposed to get insanely packed with festival-goers. Probably would have been fun,but we'll have to pass.

Ferry to the mainland

Whiskey Point coming into the harbor, complete with the Whiskey Point Lighthouse and and old Coast Guard station that is now part of a biological research facility for Central Michigan University.

We spent a lot of time walking around but really there was just a bunch of houses and businesses. Fun to gawk at as we walked by but not photo-worthy. So what was photo-worthy? If you've seen any of my photos on our Facebook page you might guess that it's the water. And you'd be nothing but right, and it just keeps getting better the farther North we go (just wait 'til we get to the North Channel)!

Don't be fooled, the water in these pictures is anywhere from 8, 10, 12 feet deep. Looks just like the Carib right?!? Go ahead, jump on in, it'll only take your breath away for a second ;)

And, for the first time on our trip, we were able to see our anchor 20ft below us! Trust me, going from water where we couldn't even see our whole rudder to all of a sudden seeing our anchor laying on the bottom is pretty darn exciting!

Our Mantus anchor nicely dug in to a sandy spot...
even though winds were so light at the time that
our chain was holding us in a totally different direction

Ron braved the cold to catch this picture.
He be crazy.

I feel like I keep saying, "I wish we had more time to spend here" everywhere we go but it still applies to Beaver Island too. With half the island being state forest, including two inland lakes, I would have loved to have been able to do some camping and hiking to check more of the island out. Darn it, why do we have to keep seeing such beautiful, interesting places that we want to see more of?? This sucks ;)