Sand Dunes in Michigan?

Marine forecasts?! I had a long paragraph typed trying to explain how the guys at NOAA come up with the predictions of weather on Lake Michigan but I confused myself so much and the Captain told me I had only told part of the story so I will tell none of it and hopefully leave you less confused than me!

Short story is that it appears the next two days will be good travel days and then we will be sitting waiting on the weather for about three days.  So we left our pretty little harbor at Charlevoix and traveled all day to Frankfort.... a 9 hour cruise. The water was great to start with and really we only ran into a short bumpy ride at the entrance to Grand Traverse Bay as we crossed it.  Most of the time we had soft rolling water.

Early on we heard the Coast Guard being called about a TREE in the water!  It was somewhere up ahead of us so we kept our eyes on the water...and sure enough there that big old thing was... root ball and all!

When the water settled down the Captain said it had “cat paws” on it so I finally got to see what he was talking about ….. turned out to be what I had described as netting laying on top of the water.

Tell me, am I the only one that has never heard of the sand dunes in Michigan?!  Did you know that this area we cruised by today is a National Park?... a National Lakeshore preserve?   When these beautiful high cliffs came into view I was amazed.   In this photo they are two miles away so you can see they are big and stretch a long way up the coast. This is Sleeping Bear Point.

And this is Sleeping Bear Dunes and at 450 feet they are the tallest sand dunes in the WORLD!

We later passed the Point Betsie light shown below and then the breakwater light into our harbor. 

Coming into Frankfort harbor.

We had arrived at another pretty little Michigan coastal town with tree-lined streets.

Every intersection has large pots with flowers.

Miss gg docked at the city park marina.

When we first came into the harbor I thought there were many more than usual mooring balls.....only some of them looked fluffy! Huh?  Then tonight just behind our boat a “fluffy” one raised her beautiful curved neck as the sun was setting.... no ugly duckling nor mooring ball but a creation of our Father.  We are so blessed to see His handiwork everywhere.