Day 21 - Playing Taps in historical places
It was so nice this morning to wake up and just walk off Ciara with Kona for her for a walk. Kona and I had a lovely time with the state park all to ourselves while she fine tuned her Frisbee skills and drank liberally from Lake Michigan whenever she wanted. We made breakfast using our leftovers and had mashed potatoes tacos.
11am rolled around very quickly and another friend from Garden came to visit. Gordy, whom we had only met very briefly in Garden, came with local gifts from his garden and local growers. I have never had Kefir before and it was delicious. Good for the gut. Lord knows Captain and I need some good gut health! Captain and I feel overwhelmed with the gifts and new friends. I pulled out all my special things for Gordy, the Freeze-dried ice cream AND the yogurt! Dr. Mark joined us a little later. We enjoyed snacks and good company before they bid us ado. Friendships are truly the best ships.
Captain and I then wanted to go hike the escarpment. We leashed Kona and headed first for the visitor center. I required some ice cream. The weather is amazing and warm for the first time! A nice gentlemen gave Kona the last of his vanilla ice cream in a dish and she made a new best friend.
The hike was wonderful. I have said it many times, and I’ll say it again, this state park has it all. Captain and I chatted along the way. All the deep thoughts by Debbie. We laughed. We planned out a little of the next few weeks and talked about the last three weeks’ worth of adventures.
We finished the last of our leftovers for dinner and went for a long evening walk, again enjoying all of the park almost completely all to ourselves.
The park officially closes at 9pm and sometime after that the rangers come around and close all the buildings for the night. This was once a thriving company town. There is a general store, many houses, a carpenter shop, machine shop, old hotel (probably resembled more of a brothel really, but hotel sounds better in the brochure) a barber and a theater amongst its ruins and preserved buildings. Our new local friends had confirmed that they knew folks who had played for fun in the theater before so we decided Taps tonight would be inside the historic theater.
Captain was besides himself as I played. Afterwards he said it was the best he had ever heard me play and that the notes just melted together. All I could think was “this is why trumpet players look to play in stairwells.” Hahaha. The acoustics were horrible, or great, depending on your point of view. If a brass band were to plan in there, I’m pretty sure your ears would be ringing for a week.
Playing Taps in the theater in Fayette
Today marks three full weeks aboard Ciara. Being a number person, I think about these things a lot. We made it a little over two and a half weeks away from the dock which is a record. Our new house batteries and solar did amazing and we never needed to turn on the generator. We spent two days rigging. Today was supposed to be the end of 4 weeks which we had hoped would all be at sea so we lost one full week of sea time. In the end we made our goals. We spent a week in the Beaver Island archipelago and very close to a week in Big Bay de Noc. We overslept, we read, I wrote, we hiked, met new friends and we quieted our minds. We hardly sailed as the winds were either blowing like mad or as calm as glass. Our food stores held to a remarkable degree and we ate way less then I thought. Captain took me out to eat once and bought fresh meat once as well as a treat and not out of necessity. Another big blow is expected Thursday so we are having to head to our home marina (for the first time!) tomorrow. We will have Thursday to tighten that packing, defrost the freezer, do laundry and clean up Ciara before we head home for a quick camp drop off. The numbers show with the logistic weekends our original 14-week plan is quickly, realistically, becoming 12 weeks on the water. Last year was eight weeks, including the logistic weekends. These are good numbers even if shorter than we had hoped. Had we been on week four right now that would be half way through last year already! 3 weeks out of 12 and the feeling of only quarter the way through the summer makes me happy. I’m glad we are still very much at the start of this adventure. We had a good three weeks to treat ourselves. Three weeks to iron out any issues and to get our sea legs back.
Time to count the stores, clean up Ciara and ourselves (I NEED A SHOWER) and have a quick, safe and efficient turnover is the goal. Can’t wait to see our kids and my parents. And a shower. :D
