CHICAGO, CHICAGO !! ...Another Excellent Adventure

We have visited Chicago more times than I can count. I had family in the city when I was a kid and Larry traveled there for work off and on for years. When you live in St. Louis it makes a nice weekend get-away; but approaching it from the Lake Michigan side was fun and really special. Our trip across the 60 miles or so of open lake from St. Joe Michigan was a good ride; you will notice that the skyline looks hazy and it was but that soon blew out.
We took a mooring ball at Monroe Harbor during our time there. This put us right in the heart of everything, only a couple of blocks from the Art Institute and Millennium Park. About a mile to Navy Pier which you can see in the shots below.

The wall like structure you see in the foreground here is the seawall that protects the mooring basin from the open waters of Lake Michigan

Another shot of Navy Pier with the giant Ferris Wheel . Did you know that the first Ferris Wheel, invented by a Mr. Ferris was introduced at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Daytime and nighttime views from our mooring with the Sears Tower dwarfing everything else.

The bright white light in the left quarter of this shot is the "castle" on the top of White Castle headquarters building. A moving platform (boat) is not the best for night photography!

Sorry about having duplicate shots here but I am not yet clever enough to eliminate the duplicate after I have mistakenly uploaded it to the blog twice, just bear with me. Anyway this is another view from our "sun room".

In the picture below the building in the foreground with the tall lightening rod is the Prudential Building, believe it or not when I was young it was the tallest building in the City, now it is dwarfed by newer towers. I really thought I was big stuff back in the 60's when I won a National 4-H award and was treated to dinner in the club at the top of the Prudential Building.

One of the major highlights of the entire voyage was our travel through the heart of Chicago. We have just passed through the Chicago Lock (that was build to keep water from the Chicago River from flowing into Lake Michigan) and are about to pass under famous Lake Shore Drive. Chicagoans (and all of us) can thank Daniel Burnham the visionary architect of the Chicago World's Fair and a pioneer in urban planning for the beautiful green ribbon along the lakefront and Lake Shore Drive.

These bridges no longer open for boat traffic (they did when I was a kid) and we had to lower our radar in order to be low enough to pass under some of them. What a thrill passing under all the busy traffic of the city as we continued on our way. You can see from this photo that there are a lot of bridges.


More fabulous views! If you visit Chicago you can experience some of this by taking the Architectural Tour that leaves from Navy Pier, it is really worth it to see the city from this perspective.

Flower baskets line areas along the river, which is really a canal at this point

The beautiful Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue

And the Michigan Avenue bridge! It's the only one that we noticed with flags.

State Street the home of Marshall Field's, well once upon a time.

On some of those bridges we didn't have very much clearance as you can see. That white area in the foreground is the top of "Lauren Grace". Yikes!

Expensive condo buildings with private docks.

Some of the bridge structures were beautiful, these tower like structures are where the bridge tender operated from back in the day when the actually "tended" the bridges.

Oops! Now we get to the not so nice part of the city. The business district and condos are behind us and the stinky industrial area is there for us to see too. Here they were making cars into "cubes", later they will be loaded onto barges for a trip to somewhere.

Stinky part and all it was still a great ride that gave us a spectacular perspective on Chicago. We loved it!

A Few Facts About Michigan Dunes & Forests

We enjoyed our visit to a museum in Grand Haven and learned, or perhaps were reminded of, some facts about the formation of the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes were formed over hundreds of thousands of years by the advance and retreat of giant glaciers. Up to a mile high in some places the ice moved south from the Arctic, scouring the earth as it passed. Advancing at an average rate of a few thousand feet per year this conglomeration of ice, rock and soil took some 4,000 years to stretch from the Arctic Circle to Lake Michigan. As the glaciers spread they deepened existing valleys, the largest of which eventually formed the Great Lakes

Over a span of about a million years the glaciers underwent four major advances and retreats. As they melted and moved back north they left enormous deposits of all they had dragged south with them. Huge heaps of gravel and sand remained after the last retreat some 12,000 years ago. These deposits now serve as one of Michigan's most important natural resources.

This is especially apparent in West Michigan where they are blessed with very unique terrain at the water's edge. Wind & storms exposed the sand, allowing it to drift toward shore and creating the dune structure in the region. These are the largest freshwater dunes in the world.

Who knew that Michigan trees provided the lumber to rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871?! Actually I never even thought about it before but this is what we learned:

Starting from a few small-scale logging operations in the early 1830's Michigan became the #1 lumber producing state in the country by 1880. Primarily the lumber was eastern white pine which was preferred because it was soft, and easy to work with. Michigan's trees provided the lumber to replace homes and structures lost in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and to build houses throughout the Midwest. By 1900 Michigan forests were logged out.

GLORIOUS GRAND HAVEN

We really enjoyed our time in Grand Haven, like many or perhaps I should say most of the towns along the Michigan shoreline it in approached through a canal that is marked by a lighthouse. In this case the canal leads right into the Grand River and carries quite a lot of traffic, some of it commercial boat traffic.

The city marina is right along the canal wall and beyond the wall is a park and "main street". It proved to be a great spot to meet the local folks as well as the local boaters. Jim from "Blue Angel", a Grand Haven native, came by and introduced himself and offered to take us to the grocery store.

You might wonder if he just spends all his time walking the docks and introducing himself but that is not how it happens. Being "cruisers" themselves the Angels know that in August cruising boats will start making our way down the Lake. We belong to an organization of boaters cruising the Loop" (the AGLCA, America's Great Loop Cruisers Association) and being a member of the AGLCA entitles us to fly a little flag known as a burgee. Other boaters recognize the burgee and that is an easy way to meet others having a similar plan or interest, generally conversation flows easily from there. Boaters are generally always willing to lend a hand to others and cruisers, especially, know what you really need which is usually a way to get fresh provisions.

Here you see the Grand Haven Canal with the lighthouse in the background
Grand Haven is known as Coast Guard City USA. This stems from the time of the arrival of the Coast Guard Cutter "Escanaba" which was home ported in Grand Haven from 1932 until it was called to duty in WWII, and subsequently sunk by a German U Boat. The citizens of Grand haven organized a war bond campaign and raised over a million dollars in only three months to pay for a second Escanaba. Every August Grand Haven hosts the Coast Guard Festival. I believe I mentioned that there is some commercial traffic on the Grand River. Here you see an ore freighter backing down the river! No tug boat is hidden on the other side guiding or pushing, he is operating under his own power. This shot is not cropped up, and those small boats you see are really quite close to the freighter. This is late on a Sunday morning and there is a lot of small boat activity.
Notice the green buoys in the background, he is turning a corner as he heads from the river to the canal. We actually saw the freighter arrive the previous evening just before dark. He is so large that he is unable to turn around in the river and must exit back to the Lake by backing down the river!

The little piece of stainless steel hand rail and the rope that you see in the left foreground is the stern of "Lauren Grace"

Beautiful Charlevoix Michigan

Another spectacular sunset on Lake Michigan.

The Charlevoix Lighthouse marks the entry into the canal leading to Round Lake which then leads mariners to Lake Charlevoix. Visitors and residents stroll along the canal to enjoy the sunset.

"Fairy Houses" in lovely Charlevoix

Also called "Mushroom" houses these were designed as residences by Earl Young who often sketched the concept that he visualized and left the detailed "working drawings" for his wife to complete. Each home share a common element of whimsy in the irregular shapes, and the curvy roofs. The first of these houses was built in 1918 and there are about 30 of them in Charlevoix. Young was a great promoter of the area as a summer resort.

Young had what I suppose you might call a vision for each project. He tried to fit each home to the site that it was to be built on and he specified mostly natural building materials. He was creative in utilizing the site

The "icing" on the chimney is a recurring theme in Young's designs

THE STRAITS OF MACKINAC

In 1671 at the village of St. Ignace on Michigan's Upper Peninsula Father Marquette established his Mission in order to bring the Christian Message to several thousand Indians who inhabited this area. They were primarily of the Huron, Ojibwa and Ottawa Nations. Father Marquette named the Mission St. Ignace in honor of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order.








In 1673 Fr. Marquette made his great voyage on the Mississippi to bring Christianity to the Iroquois Indians in Illinois. During this voyage he became ill and as it became apparent that he was dying he asked his companions to help him return to St. Ignace. Fr. Marquette never made it. He died several hundred miles South of the Mission in 1675. In 1677 some Christian Indians found his grave and returned his bones to St. Ignace where they were interred. This monument marks his burial site.






Two views of the magnificent "Big Mac" as the Mackinac Bridge is sometimes called.
An engineering marvel at the time it was constructed it was the longest bridge in the world.
You can't tell from this benign shot but this bridge spans the Straits of Mackinac where there is some of the roughest water in the Great Lakes. Winter conditions here are unforgiving, and summer is short.