Brown Eyed Girl: Ludington and the Badger

We went from Manistee to Ludington on Monday. The weather was perfect and the seas were calm. We stayed at the Harbor View Marina instead of Ludington Municipal. It is a great marina with a pool and hot tub. We docked on the wall at the end of the marina closest to the river and also right in the park. Ludington is the Michigan port for the car ferry called the Badger. The Badger is 441' long and travels between Ludington, Michigan and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It takes about 4 hours for the crossing and in the summer there are two trips per day. We got to see the ship come into and leave Ludington several times over the two days we were there. Ludington is a nice city with plenty of shops and restaurants. The beach was only a few blocks away and the walk to town was very pleasant. We had pizza one night and then cooked hamburgers on the grill the next night. They had a big ice cream store that I was able to avoid. We had planned to stay until Thursday because the weather was supposed to be windy on Wednesday but better on Thursday. When we got up on Wednesday the forecast was for 3-5's on Wednesday and worse on Thursday. We were only going 10 miles to Pentwater, MI so we decided to give it a try and then we could always turn around if it was bad. The waves were as predicted but they were on the bow which was much better then on the side. The water was coming over the top but we weren't pounding so we kept going. The boat was trashed but we made it OK. I was driving at first and we went over a couple of pretty big waves and Ginny turned around and looked out the back just in time to see the dinghy gas can fall off of the swim platform and go into the lake. I did not have the tank secured because it was kind of covered by the dinghy and had never fallen off before. I told Ginny to come about because I was going to get that tank and I didn't care how big the waves were. Of course I am just kidding, we kept going. Does anyone out there think that Ginny will ever let me not secure the tank again once we replace it, I don't. I told Marge from the Escape what happened and she said, well you learn something new every time out. I think we will be in Pentwater for two days and then travel to Muskegon on Friday. There are several Looper boats at the marina so we will probably have a few cocktails.