Day Six in New Buffalo

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's)

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 146 - August 24, 2017

The final New Buffalo post will probably be called Day Ten in New Buffalo, and that is if the rub rails come in on Monday, August 28th! 

Now, no hand-wringing here! We always anticipated we would be in Chicago on our 50th wedding anniversary on September 1st. As we progressed along the Loop, we estimated that we were perhaps 10 days ahead of that. Not that we have a schedule - our only schedule imperative is to be back in Washington State for Christmas! But to the extent we thought we were ahead, we are now more or less back where we thought we would be anyway! And there are a lot worse places to hang than at the New Buffalo Municipal Marina!

Anyway, the first thing we did today was to extend here at the marina for four more days, so now we are good though next Tuesday morning, August 29th.  The second thing we did was to make our marina reservation for Chicago! I used Dockwa.com, which we had previously used in Manasquan, and we had our confirmed reservation withing a few minutes for August 31st through September 2nd, departure on September 3rd. The significance of this is that September 3rd is a Sunday, when we anticipate we will head down the Chicago River.  There is a closure weekdays at the electric carp barrier on weekdays, but it is wide open on weekends, so hitting it on a weekend seems pretty important to us!

We saw our friends Tom and Mary on Clear Water off on their way to the marina at Marquette, but before they left, somehow we mentioned we had two snaps on our camperback that we needed to fix because they got flattened on The Worst Night Ever in St. Joseph. Tom just happened to have a kit of snaps and the tool, and he replaced them in a jiffy. Make a note, always carry a snap repair kit when you are on the Great Loop and have canvas with snaps! They left us with a parting gift too, a nice bottle of prosecco  for our anniversary! We will toast them on September 1st, wherever we are.

In the afternoon, we walked to town and had...shock of all shocks...ice cream! Then we went over to the New Buffalo Farmers Market. While it does not hold a candle to the Grand Haven Farmers Market it is not totally awful either! Patty got some more fresh basil, and we also got some peaches, smoked Gouda (from Rotary, for a good cause!), and a nice eggplant. Now, many people will wonder about the eggplant! Patty fries it up and serves it with a sour cream and garlic sauce, and it is actually one of our favorites. It will be a nice change to the dinner rut we seem to have fallen into!

We are about the only boat here in the marina tonight, but that will probably change tomorrow. The weather tomorrow promises to be the best since we have been here, with the weekend, the slips will probably fill up fast. In fact, when I extended our reservation to include the weekend, the online system said there were only two slips available, so I am glad we got out in front of that one! We plan to ride our bikes a bit tomorrow, and Baxter cannot wait for another recreational paddle!