Day 16 - 150 miles to home!

We left Sheboygan, WI around 11am Sunday, ready for our 150 mile journey home! We were lucky to have a beautiful day, and a flat calm lake to greet us.

We made a stop in Port Washington after about 25 miles to fuel up. Gas here was 40 cents cheaper than Sheboygan, and we found it to be a really cute little town that we plan on going back to visit!

About 3 hours into the trip, we stopped for lunch outside Racine, WI. This is a typical lunch on the boat for us!

Ben was pretty excited when we passed Milwaukee, as it seemed pretty close to home!

We followed the shore all the way to Chicago, and then turned to cut across the lake back to Portage.

Back outside Burns Waterway, Ben's parents met us in their boat, Executive Decision, to film our entrance back home! Thanks Bill & Kathy! :-)

Entering the channel back to our marina was both exciting and a little sad. It was nice to be back in familiar waters, and we had never realized how good we have it in Indiana on the southern tip of the lake! It seemed like we had the warmest and best water conditions around, and also the best marina friends, whom we missed! :-)

This is Seapickle II back home in her slip

And me enjoying some Summer Shandy back at the marina!

Our 150 mile journey home took about 7.5 hours, and after a couple hours of talking to family and marina friends, we were ready to get home! But we are already planning the next trip! Look for a post soon on the summary of our trip and the lessons we learned along the way!

Miles: 165.7

Time: 7hrs 21min

Fuel used: 74.6Gal

Avg Mpg: 2.22

Total Miles: 941.3

Total fuel used: 453.9Gal

Total Avg Mpg: 2.07

These Are The Days I Live For

We were lucky this 4th of July weekend to have perfect boating weather all 3 days... and we made sure to take advantage of it! We somehow managed to have no weekend plans for once, so we were able to spend Friday through Monday at the Marina. There's just something so relaxing and carefree about Marina life... it's like being on vacation, but only 15 minutes from home. We didn't plan much for the weekend, other than being out on the lake, hanging out by the pool, eating all our meals off the grill, and installing a fuel flow meter (for Ben). Friday night we enjoyed a lake perch dinner at the Marquette Yacht Club.. which I highly recommend! It's nothing fancy and only open on Friday nights, but the perch is delicious!

Saturday we spent the day out on the lake with our friends Sergio & Lisa. Our first stop was boater's beach, where the boats were lining up side by side. Not too much longer later, the shore was reaching capacity and the Seapickle II was getting blown side to side by the wind. After one close call with a neighboring boat, we decided to head down shore to more open waters.

We anchored outside the dunes national lakeshore (chesterton, in) and enjoyed an awesome lunch provided by Sergio & Lisa. Sergio even baked a pineapple rum cake for Lisa's birthday... and we ate it while floating on our raft. This is the life! haha

Sunday brought the 4th of July and fireworks on the beach in Ogden Dunes. It was crazy to see so many boats anchored out all facing someone's house on the beach! I guess it's a resident there who puts on the show and a big party! Definitely one of the better fireworks shows I've seen... with patriotic music and everything... that's a must for me :-)

We finished up the weekend washing & waxing the boat, and enjoying the sunset at boater's beach. Everyone had gone home for the week... so we had the beach to ourselves. My favorite kind of night :-)

Spending 3 days at the marina has made Ben & I even more excited for our trip in August! We were sad to leave Monday night, but look forward to next weekend for the Gary Air Show, Chicago Loop Cruise, Navy Pier Fireworks, and meeting some new Four Winns friends!

~dana