Day 4 - Washington Island & Gladstone

Since riding the bikes with Pierce had been so challenging I asked Susan if she would mind if I went out in the morning on my own. When I awoke I wiped down the dew on the boat and went on for my ride. A friend of mine Scott Spanbauer had a property on the island and asked me to go check it out if I was near by. This was my first thought of a destination. I thought it would be a fun little adventure to see more of the island. I also wanted to go around and see the other harbor, Jackson Harbor on the north east side of the island. I was gone on my ride for about 1.5 hours and saw most of the places I did not see the day before.

Jackson Harbor

Spanbauer's Property

When I returned to the boat I made some coffee showered and got ready to move on. We had planned on spending more days on the island, however, there just was not a ton to see and do so we moved on. There was also some low pressure weather coming that was going to arrive Monday night into Tuesday and we had more to do in the north and did not want to get stuck in a very remote place. Our plans originally included Fayette, but with the weather and potential of sitting in the next marina for a few days we wanted to skip that because it does not have many services or infrastructure.

Our plan now was either Escanaba or Gladstone, aka Happyrock. As we continued up Little Bay da Noc we decided to do Gladstone first. This decision was made based on temperature. Even though Gladstone is 8 miles north on the bay the temps were and forecast to be warmer than Escanaba. The marina and lake shore was nice. However, the town was not so appealing. We have found that we like a balance of both marina and towns. Susan loves the shops and restaurants. She had a mission to find a new swim suit or at least a new pair of sunglasses on this trip and we have not even found a store yet that sold anything like this. The lake shore had a very nice park for little kids and we all had fun play there for a bit. Susan and I even ran around a bit and played on the equipment. Dinner was downtown at a pizza chain in the UP Main Street Pizza. It was good and we all ate until we were stuffed and brought back the leftovers. 

Before bed we end up walking over to the Gladstone Yacht Club. They claimed to be "the friendliest on the lakes". They were great let us have a drink and were very social.