Day 6: OH...St Ignace, MI

Sawyer had too much fun in St Ignace!!

We left Petoskey at 5:30am to avoid the forecasted winds coming later in the day. Our five-hour travels took us north on Lake Michigan, under the Mackinaw bridge and past Mackinac City to St. Ignace, MI. We decided here as friends from our home harbor were coming out of the North Channel and it was a great meeting point for both of us. We rolled in around 10:30, showered at the marina, walked/played with Sawyer and then bar crawled the rest of the day with Scott and Amy. This town has only a handful of bars/restaurants, but we made sure to hit them all. We ended our festivities with dinner on the boat with a great wine Scott and Amy shared. We will continue our way towards Lake Superior while Scott and Amy will be heading south and back home.
St. Ignace was a really fun stop, probably more so because of the company we kept. We head out tomorrow morning for Detour, MI...but not too early!

We had another great day of boating on Lake Michigan. 

Oh boy!

Scott and Amy...St Ignace fun!

Yummy! Swedish Fish and Nerds candy at the bottom. This was at The Gangplank, lunch was really good too!!

Days 3-5: Petoskey sent us lots of love

Sawyer loves to snuggle and I'm happy to help!

Ben has planned the trips for our cruising to be five hours or shorter when possible. This is for both Sawyer and myself. I can only sleep so much! But seriously, I can't read for too long or blog as it makes me sleepy and a bit nauseous. Looking at my phone for more than a few minutes isn't worth the icky feeling either. So, I take in the scenery, run down and make a little lunch (today deli sandwhiches...not my fav but easy underway) chat with Ben, take pictures and cuddle with Sawyer. Ben on the other hand planned our course and navigates our trip. He runs down to the engine room to do a quick check a couple times (depending on length of our journey) and mans the wheel. Most of the time he uses our auto pilot so he isn't having to work the wheel for four hours. Sawyer has done great so far, he is pretty chill most of the time but tends to get a bit antsy around hour four, which is typical for a puppy. So, we are all happy to make our trips shorter and enjoy the towns a bit more.

Ben is lucky, he doesn't get sleepy or nauseous while reading

Good Boy Sawyer, taking another nap

Our run to Petoskey took us four hours, arriving around 1:15. We topped off our diesel before heading to our slip. While we both prefer to stay in Harbor Springs, Petoskey is a great stop for food and shopping. Because it is a fairly long walk and all uphill to get into town, it makes the hot pretzel we "had" to try an easy decision..."we'll walk it off!" All other genre of shopping i.e.: grocery store, auto store, big box stores...etc are located a couple miles further in town. We planned two nights here to do some laundry and a dinghy ride to Harbor Springs for some shopping and cookies from Tom's Moms! Sooooo Yummy! However the weather ended up keeping us here a third day.

I do not think the dozen cookies Ben bought is going to make it past a week!

We sure felt the love while in Petoskey...
Friends who keep their boat here offered us their car for some grocery shopping, wine (we forgot at home), a pillow for Ben and a stop at Walgreens. Thank you to Blue Chip! We enjoyed stopping by their boat as they have an eight week old labrador puppy!! How lucky are we??
The next day while I was doing laundry I thought I saw someone I recognized walk past the window, sure enough it was Denise and Paul from the boat Zephyr. We met them while doing The Great Loop three years ago. They were part of our fleet of six boats that crossed the Gulf of Mexico from Panama City, FL to Clearwater. Denise and Paul gave us some ideas for restaurants in town. It was great to catch up! How lucky do we feel now??
This same day we loaded into our dinghy and were just starting to make our way across Little Traverse Bay to Harbor Springs when we heard someone call out our names..."who the heck would know us here??" I said as Ben turned us around in time to see my best friends son, Cameron, jumping in the water to come see us. Cam is a Marine on break with his buddies, we did not know he was here nor did he know our plans. We only got to talk briefly but it was so great to get a hug and tell him how proud we are of him and his service! Pretty cool! I do not believe in coincidences, rather people are put in our lives for reasons. For all this love in Petoskey, we feel blessed!!

What a great surprise to see Cam!!! 

Our dinghy ride to Harbor Springs

Harbor Springs shoreline

Petoskey Clock Tower...Sawyer was a bit freaked the first few times he heard it chime 

Petoskey rock wall walkway to the light house...this is where Cam and his buddies were hanging out jumping in the water

Beautiful sunset in Petoskey

Day 2: We crossed Lake Michigan to Leland, MI

We could not have had a better day to cross Lake Michigan. The lake was flat, not a cloud in the sky topped with a wonderful coolness in the air. Pure bliss for us! We made it from Washington Island to Leland, MI in six hours. Ben was able to get some reading in and I may have napped a bit. There is something about the hum of the engines and the rocking motion from the waves that gets me everytime! But most important to us was that Sawyer seemed right at home. He napped both in his crate on the fly bridge and on "his rug" between the two of us. He was busy hunting flies and trying to stay awake too. Maybe boating has the same effect on him as it does on me because he spent a good deal of the crossing sleeping.

Sawyer safe sleeping in his crate

Our first sight of land 

Manitou Islands 

Sawyer loves to snuggle with his dad

A lot of people enjoy boating fast and for us the cruising part is the enjoyable time. Sure, we love playing tourist and hitting the towns but there is something calming about being on the water. I've always loved swimming and the sounds of water seem to bring me to my happy place. For Ben this is his heaven. So the fact that we cruise slow doesn't bother me, it gives us all time to ponder life and be one with ourselves. I didn't solve any big life issues on this trip, I was too busy sleeping but we have a month left! hehe!
We spent our afternoon and evening in Leland, MI which is one of our favorite stops. We enjoy the adorable historic fishtown for its fish dip, potato salad and some good shopping. Commercial fishing in Leland has provided the towns residents their livilhood for over 100 years. Many of the buildings that house the shops were constructed back then as fish shanties, ice houses and a smoke house which is still being used as such. What is so cool about Leland is that it is still a working fish town, something almost every Great Lake harbor had back in the day. Ben loves to visit the fisherman while they are cleaning their haul. There is something about seeing where your food comes from, which makes the smoked white fish dip I bought taste that much better!

Isn't this a cute town??? They have a great boat shoe store here but she closed early and I missed out!

Leland River, also called carp river

Sawyer learned to walk on a metal bridge. It took some enticing with treats to get him to cross (which was drawing a crowd cheering him on) but eventually he got over his fear and walked it like a pro. He enjoyed walking around town and realized in order to do that he had to walk the loud bridge. He was also really interested in people and dog watching from our flybridge, something I enjoy as well.
So, all in all the trip is going great! My biggest fear was Sawyer not enjoying...I have no more fears, he seems to love boating as much as us!!

Watching dogs walk by

People watching from the fly bridge

First Stop: Washington Island...

I think we have a boating dog! He was tail wagging and taking it all in!

Our first stop was only a three hour run north so we spent our morning at our house cutting grass and making sure everything was set for our travels over the next month. We have a friend staying at our house taking care of the yard and making sure our garden gets eaten!! How lucky are we?? It makes leaving for this amount of time less stressful and our friend gets to see what its like living in the country!! Hopefully the house will be in tip top shape when we return...hint hint!!

Packing for vacation has never been my strong suit. I tend to over pack as I like to have many options with shoes to match. So, how the heck do you pack for a month??? Especially knowing you are traveling to a destination colder than our current location?? The problem for me is that we are making our way north over about 4-7 days and while we will be spending time in colder temps, the stops before our Lake Superior stop will be in northern michigan where temps are still warm during the day. So, yet again I have packed most of my clothes. I've been making secret (well the cats out of the bag now) stops to the boat and stashing my clothes and the seven pairs of shoes that I will need for our trip, hehe! As I'm typing this I can say that I have already worn three different pairs of shoes! Now to figure out how to work the other four pairs in...

Provisioning is also a problem for me as I like to have many options in the food category too. I can not take my garden with us, darn it! Our fridge and freezer have limited space, although in the boating world we air on the larger side. Much like home, I shop for a weeks worth of food and that will be our plan here too. I planned meals for our long days of travel keeping the captain nourished while underway (breakfast and lunch options) with a few dinner ideas as well. Part of the fun traveling is walking into towns trying new restaurants.

As we pulled out of the drive way I had that feeling of "I know I'm forgetting something, just hope it isn't something major!"

We had glorious weather on our run north, we made it to Washington Island at 3:00. We stopped for a hot dog and a bit of sight seeing before calling it a night. We leave in the morning to cross Lake Michigan which will be the longest Sawyer has been on the boat. Wish us luck and hope our little guy will enjoy our travels as much as his brother Crocket did!

Our run north to Washington Island was wonderful!

Docked at Island Outpost on Washington Island

Sawyer is such a good boy hanging with us while we eat and drink!

Waiting for our hot dogs we were served whitefish dip and smoked chicken on the house! Love small town life!

WE ARE BACK!! And heading to Lake Superior!

Our beautiful dog Crocket celebrating earning the Gold Loop Burgee with us.

After taking a break from boating for a year to care for our beloved dog Crocket, we are back out on the water. Crocket was so loved (and will be forever), he had a great life and loved his time cruising with us. We are so very blessed we were able to join him in becoming a gold looper dog!! We loved everything about cruising with Crocket and want to continue this with our new addition. We now have a puppy named Sawyer, he is six months old (also a Springer Spaniel) and has been on the boat two times...let me repeat this...two times!!! He seems to LOVE it so far so we are going to take the chance and spend over a month traveling on Lake Superior ending our trip in Harbor Springs, MI before crossing Lake Michigan a second time returning to our lovely waters of Green Bay.

Our new puppy Sawyer

Ben and I completed The Great Loop (click here to learn more about The Great Loop) in 2016, and have boated every Great Lake BUT Lake Superior. We had planned to travel Lake Superior before we left for the Loop but time (and me getting sick) prevented this journey. Honestly I was OK with this back then, I was actually quite scared of the big lake. I also did not have the many (over 6,500 miles) hours/miles of experience gained from doing the Loop. Now I feel like we HAVE to do this, we HAVE to conquer the largest Great Lake!!!

Not only is Lake Superior the largest freshwater lake at 350 miles long and 160 miles wide, it is the deepest (1,333 feet at its deepest) and coldest, with average temperatures of 40 degrees, of all the Great Lakes. Because of its size, this lake can really become treacherous given the right winds. There are reports of waves reaching 51 feet high...NO. THANK. YOU!! There have been hundreds of ship wrecks on Lake Superior with over 1,000 lives lost. Most of these occur in the fall when the winds and waves tend to be more aggressive. The calmest months to visit Lake Superior are June and July...Gosh, we have good timing! Of course we planned our trip around these facts and will take each day with stride and not put ourselves in danger. If weather is bad, we stay put. We will enter the Lake from Sault Ste. Marie, boating west along the south shoreline then spending time in the Keweenaw Peninnsula with friends. We would like to make it to the Apostle Islands but we will see how weather and our timing goes.
We will leave our slip in Ephraim, WI and make our way to Washington Island (30 miles north) before we cross Lake Michigan making our way further north! We welcome you to follow along on our travels!

Farm livin is the life for me...

Farmer Ben and his hay...only thing is that we didn't' have to do the work!

Ben and I live on 20 acres of land, of which 13 acres is being farmed by a local farm here in Door County, WI. We love the fact that our 13 acres is not only zoned agriculture (which helps with taxes!), but that it is certified organic! Waseda Farms, located here in Bailey's Harbor, WI, supplies their organically raised animals and crops to local restaurants, markets and the public. I love that we are a part of the chain that feeds the cattle raised at Waseda! We grow grass, pesticide-free, that is fed to the cattle.
Since moving here in November, we have been in contact with Waseda anxiously waiting for the day that they will be here cutting, baling and hauling off the grass. Well, that day finally came!! We were like kids in a candy store! Ben, Crocket and myself all loaded up in our side by side and drove around taking pictures of all the action.

Really cool video of them unloading the hay bale

This is our front property, looks like they were able to get about 25 bales of hay just from our front field

loading the hay from our back field

Off to feed the cattle! Actually they ferment the hay first so we are supplying hay for the winter months

There's a wedding in our future!!!

AND it's at our house!! Our friends Josh and Kacie got engaged and asked to have their special day here on our property! WOW!!... OK! Let's do it!

We had an idea they were interested by several subtle comments made before Josh proposed. Josh and Kacie were visiting us last September, when we drove them past the house. We did not own it at that time but we were pretty excited to show them our future digs. They loved it too! And made the comment about getting married here.
So, on the evening of the big proposal, they talked to us about the possibility and heck, we said YES!

Planning has been underway and Ben and I have been enjoying all the visits they have been making to take care of wedding stuff. I can't believe it! We are going to have a wedding on our property!!

We couldn't be more excited for our friends and the wonderful future they will have together.

Everyone goes through a hard time in their life...

I keep praying that tough situations build strong people. I haven't felt very strong lately as we have been going through a really rough time.

My mothers day! The best gift to have our little boy alive!!

We almost lost our little buddy Crocket May 1st. He had started throwing up and then became lethargic, leading us to the Emergency Vet in Green Bay, WI, about 50min from our home. There they discovered a mass in his abdomen which needed to be removed. We raced him to Veterinary Specialty Center in Buffalo Grove, IL (this is like the Mayo Clinic of Veterinary hospitals, they can do it all!) to perform the surgery. They confirmed the mass in his abdomen but couldn't tell us if they could remove it until they opened him up. We sent him into surgery unsure if he would make it. Thankfully, the cancer mass (which ended up being two masses) was contained and removable. They did not see it anywhere else and felt confident that Crocket would have a good recovery and quality of life post surgery. What caused Crocket to get sick was a ruptured appendix. Had that not happened we would have never found the cancer. Crocket made it through the surgery like a rock star, and he was able to come home after 5 days in the hospital. The  two-week wait to get the results of the type of cancer and treatment options seemed to drag on and was hanging over us like a black cloud. The preliminary results showed either a type that was treatable or possibly a type they could not do anything to help. Prayers for our buddy were fulfilled! His type of cancer is treatable and the chemo pills used to treat it has an 80% success rate. He will not be rid of cancer but this miracle pill will help suppress his cancer (even though they removed all the masses) and allow for a normal life. The Drs shared with us that another dog with the same type of cancer is still alive after 2 years on this pill.
We entered into the two week trial to see how he handled the chemo. Finally some good news...he is responding well to the chemo, he's gained weight and he isn't in any pain in his abdomen. The stress hasn't subsided as we have had other things turn up, like a bladder infection, a spot on his abdomen (which turned out to be a skin infection...phew!!) and now behavioral issues relating to his food. But, he is alive and he is more and more like his old Crocket self. He runs like a crazy dog on our morning walks, he begs for treats and wants to play ball! Pretty impressive for all he's been through at 12 years old.

If you look close, the shadow next to Crocket looks like his angel!

Crocket LOVES to go for rides on anything with wheels (or ski's)!

Crocket was so excited to get tennis balls from his Grandma Oblak

The stress of all this hit me hard and I ended up with shingles on my face. The worst pain I have ever had and it knocked me out. Of course this came at the worst time, just when Crocket was able to come home. The pain was unbearable, I found myself having to take pain meds (which make me way loopy) so I could handle the burning, tingling, itching pain caused by shingles. My poor husband! Not only did he have Crocket to worry about and care for but he had me to nurse. We are over a month since the Crockets surgery and I'm still dealing with the shingles, not nearly as bad but the pain, itching and tingling are still present. And my husband is still my rock!

Shingles

If things could get worse, they did. We got word that Ben's grandma (who was a month shy of her 96th birthday) was not doing well and it seemed God was calling her home. We both were able to see her and spend time with her the couple days before she passed. Crocket was able to give her love, she even said his name and reached for him! We had a house full of family for grandmas funeral and spent our time celebrating her life with all our loved ones. True blessings!

While we may be stressed we see the blessings in all this, we have more time with our beloved pet. We are blessed we were able to do all this for him and continue to do for him. We have a supportive, loving family and amazing friends, all whom have prayed hard and been there in every way we could imagine. I've been told that all this will make me stronger, I'm still waiting for that to happen. I sometimes feel like a weak ball of stress, but we get up each morning thankful for another day filled with love and another special angel in heaven looking out for us.

This was Grandma and Grandpa Zito's 70th wedding anniversary! They were married 73 years when she passed. 

Grandma "Noni" was new to selfies!