The recent holiday left us cheerful and gracious more than ever before on our sailboat. We enjoyed the time with friends and familiar places while continuing our upgrades to an already awesome boat. Most of our days were busy taking care of chores and errands but also made time for visiting with friends too!
Muskegon
Our travels after Chicago led us back to Muskegon where we were able to spend a couple weeks catching up with friends and enjoying the familiar surroundings. Before the holiday came around, we started our celebrations the week before at Electric Forest Festival. For my group of friends, that means a week of camping, drinking, and listening to music until the early AM hours. Each year is unique and I have now been to the festival for eight years. Our favorite day of the festival is always Saturday due to the epic show from The String Cheese Incident, a slew of random decorations floating around the crowd, and of course fireworks! It’s an indescribable experience and the best IMO.
It always takes a couple days after the festival to get back into the swing of things. We ended up staying until early Monday morning and took most the week to relax before our celebrations to continue the next weekend. We decided to have a party on July 2nd for friends to come out to party on Tipsy Gypsy and enjoy another set of fireworks. It was a fantastic beach day complete with food, beer, and plenty of pool floaties. We also launched Fuzz for the occasion. Our friends will be taking care of her during the Summer to continue their own journey in learning how to sail! The entire day was filled with celebration as we knew it’d be quite some time before we see these friends again. Although our journey is always fun, it is always difficult to say goodbyes.
Whitehall
July 3rd was a busy day of errands, cleaning, and resting from the day before. As I ran around doing the busy work, Tharon taught the guys how to sail and maintain Fuzz. We didn’t see each other most the day and finally got to sit down for dinner on the boat. Instead of relaxing, we sailed away from Muskegon over to Whitehall to anchor for the night. It was a very quiet anchorage with great scenery and many other boats neighboring ours. Not long after sunset, we were ready for bed. We cleaned up fast and couldn’t wait for my head to hit my pillow. But wait, it’s the Summer and it’s July 3rd!! Fireworks filled the air right as we jumped into bed. It was a private show on the lake and although we were extremely exhausted, we couldn’t help but stay up the watch the magnificent light show! We were directly under them! Looking around there were fireworks all over the lake and couldn’t help but get distracted by them throughout the night. We smiled and were thankful for such a great way to end the day!
Frankfort
On a high from the night before, we prepared for the upcoming journey quickly and with a pep in our step. Our goal was to be in Frankfort by the end of the day and would be a total of 95 miles. It was ambitious and ended up having us doing a mix of motoring while sailing to make sunset. It was a long day of sailing but great conditions to relax in. We made it to Frankfurt just in time for sunset and soon realized that fireworks would soon happen on the lake. Thousands of people were gathered on the beach and boats congregated all around the break wall. It was a pleasant surprise and would be our final set of fireworks for the holiday. We saved the best for last and got an incredible show! For our first time to Frankfort, we were impressed by the greeting and ended up staying the next day as well. Some highlights from our trip were the Frankfort Lighthouse, Point Betsie Lighthouse, the beach, Stormcloud Brewing, and Huff’s Crystal Art. So happy we made this stop!
Overall, we had an amazing time celebrating America’s Independence!! We witnessed four incredible firework shows, showcased Tipsy Gypsy to some of our closest friends, and made headway on our travels North. We started our goodbyes to Lake Michigan with high hopes for Lake Huron!!
Cheers & thanks for reading!!
