Brown Eyed Girl: Company is Here

Some statistics before the blog. We have been gone 20 days, traveled 567 miles, been to 14 different ports, put 58 hours on the engines and have used 626 gallons of fuel. That is an average of .9 miles per gallon. I am still hoping to get to 1 so we will have to go slower. I think we are doing great so far. No suicidal or murderous thoughts on my part and since I am the one writing this blog we will leave it at that. We went from Leland to Frankfort on Friday. The trip was only about 42 miles and the seas were pretty good. Frankfort is an easy port to enter and dock. The marina is a little lake called Betsie Lake and most of the seasonal boats are fisherman so there was a lot of water traffic. Frankfort is a great little town because it is close and has all of the stores you could want. There is a great beach and a full service grocery store. We were going to stay for two days because my sister was coming on Saturday and we were going to meet her in Frankfort. We didn't do much on Friday. We had drinks and dinner with Mike and Marge from Escape and they went to see the sunset but we went back to the boat. Saturday was very busy (as busy as a retired boater wants it do be). There was a car show and farmers market at the marina, a book sale at the library and an art festival a couple of blocks away. I got up early and walked around the town a little while Ginny was getting ready for the day. We went to the farmers market and then Ginny wanted to walk fast so I told her I would meet her at the art show. Some of you know that I have a horrible sense of direction and of course I got lost. Ginny got tired of waiting and went back to the boat. I got back eventually but saw a good bit of the city. We looked at the cars and enjoyed the excellent weather. Ginny wanted to go back to the art show so I took the dinghy out by myself. Of course I got stopped by the coast guard and they did a vessel safety check. I must have passed because they let me go. We didn't have enough power to run all of the air conditioners but it was cool enough that we didn't need to. Cherie (my sister from Columbus) rented a car and drove to Traverse City MI where she turned in the car at the airport and then got a cab for the 40 mile trip to Frankfort. She arrived about 4:00 P.M. with our mail and a hard drive full of movies. We caught up for a while and then went to a local market to get some ribs and chicken for dinner. After dinner we had visit on Escape and then Cheri went to the beach to get a picture of the sunset that we can't seem to stay up for. You can see the picture below. We got up today and went to Manistee but I will write about that tonight.