Wave Pointe Marina, Little Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

View from the marina side of Wave Pointe Marina & Resort

For our Door County adventure, a friendly blog reader and fellow Four Winns forum member who had seen this post about our 2013 trip planning recommended Wave Pointe Marina & Resort in Little Sturgeon Bay as a great place to launch our trip! (Thanks Jeff & Kim!)

View from the marina side of Wave Pointe Marina & Resort

The pool-side tiki bar and patio

Nice swimming pool

We were very impressed with the Marina & the facilities (definitely the nicest bathrooms & showers we've ever had while boating), and the pool was an added bonus since Dana loves to get in a morning swim whenever possible. There was a restaurant on-site (which we didn't get to try) that is a nice touch since the nearby town of Sturgeon Bay was about a 10 minute drive.

Looking down the dock to Little Sturgeon Bay

Seapickle II docked at Wave Pointe Marina

Looking toward Carmody Park public launch ramp

Another reason we chose to launch in Little Sturgeon Bay was the nice public launch ramp ($7 launch fee) that was directly next to Wave Pointe. There was a long dock to tie up to while parking the truck and trailer. There was no overnight parking there, but Wave Pointe offered free truck & trailer parking in the open field across the street from the resort. Compared to some other places we've had to park the trailer, this was a huge deal for us!

Good room to get the boat ready for trailering home

Free trailer parking for marina guests in the field across the street

Another view of the trailer parking field.

First Trailering Adventure with Seapickle II

Since getting the trailer for Seapickle, we've been anxious to try it out and get a taste for what trailering a boat our size will be like. This past weekend seemed to be the perfect weekend to take a roadtrip, and the bright and sunny Friday morning weather sure did not disappoint! Friday morning, after packing up our bags and saying goodbye to the cats, we headed to Doyne's to pick up the boat & trailer (we had already loaded it Thursday night). Thankfully our friend Barry was there, who reminded us to attach the safety strap (oops!) and helped Ben get the trailer attached to the truck. The only thing we seemed to overlook was putting down the antenna, which was a bit bent up after our trip!

Getting onto the highway (I-94 East) was a little stressful, and we quickly realized there were many more hills on the highway than we had ever noticed! The truck did very well pulling though, and aside from a few stressful merges and a pretty inconvenient detour, we made the 160 miles to the public launch ramp in Montague, Mi (home of the world's largest weathervane) in just about 4 hours. We stopped a few times along the way to check the tire pressure and hub temps, and everything seemed to be just fine.

By the time we got the boat settled into slip #23 at the White Lake Municipal Marina, walked back to the launch ramp, parked the truck in an abandoned lot (where the heck is overnight parking??), stocked up on supplies at Montague Foods and walked back to the boat, we were too tired to grill dinner so we headed over to the Harbor View Grille, which was just a couple blocks from the marina in Whitehall, and had a great view of the sunset over White Lake.

Since sunset is an hour later in Michigan than it is for us in Indiana, we still had time to make it to Pekadill's while it was still light out at 9:30pm! I went boring with the Butter Pecan in a waffle cone (delicious!), while Ben tried a caffeine-infused chocolate peanut butter ice cream that was supposed to have as much caffeine as an energy drink! (he still was tired after eating it)

We got back to the boat around 10pm, and it was STILL light out! But we were exhausted after a long day, so after making Ben pose for an impromptu photo shoot, we curled up to watch the stars come out over White Lake, and planned out what was to come for Saturday. (which will be continued in the next post)