More ships!!!!!!!!!

Some "old-timers" here in the park have been very interesting. They come up here for three months and park on the waterfront sites and ship watch all summer. A couple of them know all kinds of information about the ships, the type, how much they weigh, where they go, where they come from, etc. One even knows the captain of one of the ships and he received a "captain's salute" when he was standing out by the water. That consists of 1 long and 2 short "toots" on the horn from the ship. Pretty cool.

He told us about the "rock cut" which is an area about 15 miles south of here where the ships go through a man-made channel. You are close enough to the ships to talk to the crew and you can see more of the decks than you can from our current vantage point. The instructions to get there went something like this. . . go down this road and take the right of the Y just past the flashing light. . . go to the stop sign by the post office and turn left. Go down a ways to another stop sign where a restaurant is visible. . . then turn right and go till you see a stone house out by the road. There will be a second house and a "pig path" just past it where you have to turn. Hahaha.

Another lady and I were listening to these instructions, and we both ran back to the rigs to get paper and a pen and when we returned he drew me a map. Thank you. It has been raining off and on all morning and early afternoon and I didn't think Terry was too interested in going.

But later he suggested that we run down there, so off we went. Wow. It is impressive. It looks like it was dug and then lined with huge rocks cut right there. They line the two sides of the channel. You could indeed almost reach out and touch ships as they pass by. Unfortunately, we waited over an hour and didn't see one. Now remember, we had ships passing by all morning and at one point they were qued up to go through the locks, but when we wanted to see some in the channel, there were none. Disappointed, we left and returned. On the way back, we were treated to seeing Sandhill Cranes in someone's yard. It looked like two adults, probably parents, and a younger bird. They are really huge and beautiful.

Just as we got back to camp, the skies let loose and we had a torrential downpour. You could not see Canada across the channel. We had a lot of water in the campground which obviously doesn't drain well, so we had to wait a bit before getting out of the car and running into the motorhome.

Afterwards, by suppertime, the skies had cleared and we had beautiful blue sky. It didn't last long and it has clouded up again, but no rain so far. We are leaving here tomorrow and headed to Alpena, then Oscodo to see some friends we haven't seen for years.

Till next time. . .

Dale