Sturgeon Bay,WI

3-4-5 September 2014

We left Fish Creek early in the morning and headed to Egg Harbor MI. Egg Harbor is known for the lowest price for Diesel fuel in Door County. They had bought an option of over 100,000 gallons of fuel at $3.64 in the spring. They were a few cents more at the start, but by now with fuel in the $4.10 range they are a deal. We pulled into harbor and got 125 gallons and a pump out. So we are good until we get to Chicago. It also helped reduce our overall cost of fuel down to $4.61 a gallon. Getting burned for $5 a gallon in Rochester (since it was $3.80 in Oswego and we decided to wait) and the high cost of fuel in Canada didn’t help. But my average fuel cost on the way back down is the good point.

We got in to the Stone Harbor Marina just after lunch. It is a nice marina, very close to the downtown area, pretty pleased with the choice. It had been a recommendation from people we met at Fayette. As we were docking a giant gold and black boat came past. The dock rumors are it’s headed for the Mediterranean, its being built for a wealthy Russian and there are a number of lawsuits over it already since it’s late being finished. It’s sister ship left a few weeks ago.

Susan wasn’t feeling well so I headed off to get Belle’s food refilled. On the way back I stopped at the Sturgeon Bay Maritime Museum. A good place, they had 5 big rooms: History of boats and ship building in Sturgeon Bay, Power boats and engines, Pirates, Ship Models, and Light Houses. There was also a smaller room that had Coast Guard displays. It was very nice and took me about 90 minutes to go through it.

We had been invited to “Docktails” by the crew of Reunion. They are very nice people, we learned a lot about the next 900 miles of loop. They shared with us the “Looper Loop”, a 40” length of clear plastic pipe that you thread your line through and tie into a loop. It won’t collapse when you are trying to put it over the floating bollards in the commercial locks.

For dinner we headed into town and had a great meal at a small cafe. There was a used bookstore that we stopped in. Lots of “ephemeral books” as the sign said, but nothing we really wanted to read.

The next morning we rented a car and went to Green Bay. We had a great breakfast at “The Pancake House” and we toured Lambeau field.

Our next stop was the National Train Museum. They had three buildings full of trains and cars, it was about three times the size of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/ Lots of great engines, including the Union Pacific “Big Boy” #4017. It is one of the largest steam / coal fired engines ever built. It’s huge!

They also have one of the Ultra Dome Dining cars that were used on the western railroads. These are a bi-level dining car, where the upper seating level has a dome roof over it and the kitchen level is below. I remember seeing ads for this in my 20′s and thought it would be cool to ride one.

After all the touring we went back to three different used book stores. We picked up another stack of books for the next part of the trip.

Dinner was at the “Titletown Brewing Company”. It’s a small brewpub located in the old train station. We could really tell it was Game Day, since about 50% of the patrons and all the waitstaff had their Packers Jerseys on. I had a really great Jambolya that was made with their beer. Susan had a bison burger that was also very good.

On the way home we hit some more storms. But by the time we got back to the boat, it was clear and their were stars in the sky. The forecast was for a windy day, so we would be spending the next day waiting for the winds to drop so we could go south.

Friday the winds kept up most of the day, so we did odds and ends around the boat. The Loopers from Prime Time came over to chat. They are gold Loopers they got done last year. They live in this area, they spent this summer just doing things in Lake Michigan. They think next year they will go back to the North Channel. Nice people.

For dinner, Susan made NY strip steaks and kohlrabi. I can’t remember having kohlrabi before, it was good with a little butter and salt on it.

The title picture is the “weed munchy” that comes to clean the weeds that grow in the marina. It has a cutter bar on the front and the sides of the conveyer belt. As the weeds get cut, the belt lifts them up and into the boat. There is a second one that moves them to the back of the boat. It’s driven by paddle wheels rather than props. Props could get tangled in the weeds. There are three of these, two that do the marinas in the town and one big one that does the main channel.

The weather forecast for Saturday is good, so we will take off in the morning to go the 50 miles to Manitowoc.