Each place we go has its own personality. Frankfort was about good food, kind of old, with a confusing real estate price structure. Petosky was friendly and well kept. Traverse City had a nice bike path and those planets. Well Ludington has salmon. Lots and lots of salmon fishing going on here. So many that they keep the salmon fishermen in cages!
Here are the caged fishermen cleaning their catch. Doesn't it look delicious? The gross part was in about 1 minute the guy on the left turned on a grinder in the center of those tables and ground up all the bodies. It sent chills up my spine. I had to leave.
Ludington has lots of marinas. More like what we are used to at Sandusky, but a bit smaller in total number of boats. We are staying at the municipal marina, because we like the municipal marinas. They generally cost about $42 per night. That works out to be a little more than $1 a foot, pretty reasonable. We paid $95 at Maumee State Park and $75 per might at Silver Shores in Wyandotte, not a very nice marina at all, although the people were great. So we prefer the municipal marinas.
The municipal marina is on one side of this great park with sculptures honoring Ludington's history.
On the other side is Harbor View Marina, a lot like Venetian Marina, even has a pool. And look at the gathering of dock sitters! What dock? D DOCK! There are D Dock sitters everywhere if you look carefully. We sure miss our D Dock sitters!
Between and around these two nice marinas are large new condo developments, really pretty. We are seeing more people here than any other place since Mackinaw City. It is kind of refreshing. Still the restaurants are not crowded, the marinas and not crowded just pleasantly active, and the beaches are not crowded. 
We got a funny call last night from Don Donataccio. He is a regular reader and noted the blog about the cruise ship Yorktown that tried to dock at the end of our pleasure craft dock in Charlevoix. He was listening to his coast guard scanner last night (of course he was!!) and heard the vessel name "Yorktown" calling for help. Evidently this huge cruise ship, 257 feet long, was stuck in the mud off Fighting Island in the Detroit River!! They were stuck for hours through the night. Don listened to the entire report and called laughing because it was so funny. We have been through that area many, many times. It is very deep. Freighters run through there regularly. All you have to do is stay in the channel. Evidently the captain did not read the fine print!! Here is an update on the grounding:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2012/08/yorktown_cruise_ship_temporari.html
Today we biked up the Ludington State Park to see the dunes. It was great fun. The water was clear and comfortable, probably about 74 degrees with nice waves that made for good body surfing. No dogs allowed. Thank goodness Rusty decided to stay back at the boat.
Looks like a great white-sand beach anywhere in the world!!
We have requests for more technical information about the trip. We can accomodate. Kermit has a spreadsheet with all the info in it.
We have been gone for 44 days and traveled 692 miles. That means we are now about 10% through the trip.
The engines put on 46 hours of travel time. Our average speed is about 18 mph, using 36 gallons per hour. Our NEW average speed is about 9mph using 8 gallons per minute. You can see why we are interested in slowing down.
We have used 792 gallons of gas at a cost of $3569. Average cost of $4.90 per gallon. Yesterday we filled up when we arrived at Ludington at a cost of $4.35 and we felt blessed. Our tanks are at least 7/8 filled if not completely filled right now.
Dockage has cost $1218 so far in this trip. The Michigan municipal marinas are about $42 per night. Our overall expenses have been much less than we expected so far. I hope that continues.
We made reservations in Chicago for 9/8 through 9/22 at a cost of 2.35 per night, still less than the cost of Maumee State Park and Silver Shores Marina in Wyandotte plus we will be staying at the new DuSable Marina, opened only a couple years ago.
Tomorrow we will leave for Muskegan. We will meet up with Pete and Terri Bate who are also vacationing in Michigan. They will stay on our boat for a couple of days. We cleaned the boat during the rain storm today so we are ready!!
Here is the looper locator so you can follow us. Remember we are not on the hard. We are in the first marina as you enter the harbor in Ludington MI.
http://greatloop.org/mod/aglcalocator/membermap.php?id=1001
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