Day 11: Spending time on Drummond Island

Plane fueling up at Drummond Island Yacht Haven

We woke up Monday morning to beautiful blue skies and plenty of sunshine. There was a plane fueling up behind us at the gas dock, and it drew quite the morning crowd! It was very cool to watch the plane land and come in, then head back out into the lake.

Take off outside Drummond Island

Storm clouds rolling in late morning

 As was becoming a theme on this trip, due to unforseen circumstances we were again on an island miles away from stores/food and we were completely out of food & water on our boat! We had some canned chili, but one can only survive on canned chili for so long. ;-) We were longing for a good meal, so even with storm clouds rolling in Dana decided it would be a good idea to walk the 3 miles to the grocery store. She figured, since it's an island, someone would take pity on us and pick us up on the way!

We walked about a mile in the noon heat, and thank goodness a nice girl who worked at the local coffee shop picked us up and drove us to the grocery store. She offered to wait for us while we did some quick shopping and would then drive us back to our boat. We got into that grocery store and were so excited to see fresh fruit & veggies, steaks, and buffalo cheese curds!! that soon our cart was full and we were headed to check out. Just as we made it to the counter... everything shut down... the storm had come in and the power was out. So, remember, we're on an island, and the people in the store are freaking out, and we don't have any cash left, so we can't just pay cash, and they can't run a debit card, and when there's a power outage on the island it usually takes HOURS before it comes back on. So... we regretfully push our full cart into one of the coolers to return for it later, and run outside so we can catch a ride back to the marina. No food for us :-(

Sad about not getting to buy groceries

We got back to the boat and were just bummed out and hungry. So against Dana's principles, we went to the office and arranged to rent a car to drive to dinner about 4 miles away. By now there's gale force winds, we don't want to attempt to walk to a restaurant, bicycles cost $8/hour (EIGHT DOLLARS AN HOUR!!!) to rent and we don't really have any other choice. We reserved a car, they pointed out to us which one to take and told us the keys were just kept in the ignition. So to make a long story short, we got all dressed up for dinner and were so excited to get out to explore, and also to stop at the grocery store on the way to get food/water for the next few days. And when we walked back over to get the car...IT WASN'T THERE!! 

We looked around for the car, for another car with keys in the ignition, for someone who worked there... but had no luck. Then we walked by the bike rack, and noticed that the bikes weren't chained up. Our stomachs decided for us that even though the wind was blowing 30 miles per hour, the bike tires were low on air, and it was getting close to dark... we were going to ride those bikes to find food. Luckily about a mile into our ride, we passed a car repair shop and Ben filled up the tires so the rest of the ride was much much easier.

Sune's Famiy Restaurant

We ended up at the closest restaurant, Sune's Family Restaurant, and parked our bikes for dinner. (And there in the parking lot was the car that we rented.) We enjoyed a nice dinner, drinks and then ice cream across the street at a little ice cream stand. We didn't make it to the grocery store before it closed, but at least our bellies were full for the day.

Cute little ice cream shop

 We returned to the marina just at sunset and took a little bit of time to relax. We decided we didn't want to attempt again to find food and groceries the next day on the island, so we made plans to leave early in the morning for DeTour, Michigan and spend a few days exploring by truck!

Beautiful sunset to end the day