She took this picture of us on laundry day:
As they were leaving on Monday, she gave Mary a stack of magazines. As a working Mom, she didn't have time to read them. Mary spent the rest of the day in the "Queen of America" chair with the magazines.
We also met a couple from Oklahoma on a 20 foot bowrider who have done bits of the loop. They bought the boat in Cheboygan, MI and have taken it across Lake Michigan to Beaver Island and on to Wisconsin. They asked why Michigan boater registration numbers begin with MC instead of the 2 letter post office code for the state (MI), as other state boater numbers seem to. We have no idea. Does anyone know?
We rode our bikes 7 miles to Pere Marquette State Park, the biggest state park in Illinois. Paul would love the bike trail-lots of hills. The park has a lodge that was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 30's. It's beautiful, with a 10 foot fireplace in the lobby. We had breakfast there and Mary's canteloupe half with vanilla yogurt garnished with granola, blueberries and strawberries was almost too pretty to eat. We passed the spot where Marquette and Joliet came ashore on their way to determine if the Mississippi River connects with the Pacific Ocean:
We walked a lot in Grafton, also. They have a visitor's guide that refers to an historic walk. There are little lighthouses on the visitor's guide to indicate historic sites and a note that explains you can get the guide to the historic walk at the visitor's center or the chamber of commerce. We would have had to walk along the highway to get to the visitor's center, so we looked for the chamber of commerce. We went to city hall, where a very accommodating woman told us they don't really have a separate chamber of commerce. She called the visitor's center and the staffer there had no idea what she was talking about. She called the mayor, who had gone home for the day and he explained that they haven't quite gotten the brochure developed. We walked through town, anyway, and looked for something historical wherever the mark was on our map. Sometimes it was obvious, sometimes we had no idea, but we enjoyed the walk. The woman in city hall showed us the mark on the wall where the water came in the flood of 2008. We started watching and on some of the buildings marks are visible and others have signs indicating how high the water was especially during the "big" floods of 1993 and 2006.
The shark boat is a water taxi. Everything floats here, including the buildings and the swimming pool. The mark on the post by the shark boat indicates how high the water was this spring. It's hard to imagine that the base of the building was as high as that mark. The water is low right now, so is creating some problems at the pool. They'll have to float the pool away this fall and dredge under it.
The pirate ship in this picture is built on a house boat and gives rides on the weekends. He was leaving the harbor on Sunday when the wind caught him and he came down the channel in front of our boat. John was up at the marina office as this 70 foot boat was blown sideways and completely around in the 50 feet between our bow and the breakwall in front of us. How he missed is due to the captain's tremendous piloting or maybe just to luck. Mary watched helplessly then went to the store and told John she wasn't going back to the boat until he was there to share the moment when the pirate ship came back down. He actually turned it around and made it out without hitting any boats.
This B-25 flew over on Labor Day, someone must have had an air show. This is the second one we have seen in the air this year. We are planning to start down the Mississippi River on Wednesday.
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