Can Summer Be Over Already?

We spent a little over a week at home enjoying our air conditioning and cats (and taking care of a few important matters, as well), returning to Elk Rapids on Wednesday, August 18 in hopes of starting our trip south toward Muskegon. Originally we planned to come back north on Tuesday, but the forecast for Wednesday didn't sound promising, so we stayed home an extra day.

Our first night back we were welcomed by high wind and rain, making the next day no good for travel, as the storms had churned up large waves on the bay. The winds calmed down overnight, so we thought about leaving at 2:00 a.m. today, in order to arrive in Leland when we thought the marina would open, around 8:00. Neither of us wanted to try to arrive in the dark. Anyway, when we turned in yesterday evening the forecast sounded promising: light winds and small (less than 2 foot) waves. But by 2:00 a.m. the forecast had changed and our wind gauge was reading over 10 knots steadily, gusting to 18. The overnight reports from the mid-lake buoy showed a disturbing trend of increasing wind and waves, so we decided to go back to bed. When we got up again around 8:00 and saw that the conditions weren't too bad, we thought about leaving, but weren't sure we had a big enough window to reach Leland before the next batch of storms arrived. So we decided instead to stay here and stock up at the grocery store and our favorite fruit/vegetable stand in order to be ready to leave tomorrow.

The afternoon took a turn for the worse when, while waiting for a parking spot at the fruit stand, our car was backed into by an elderly woman who was leaving. Fortunately Roger, who was standing outside the car, moved out of her path in time, but our back door got quite a dent. It's a good thing we had given up on any possibility of leaving today. After talking to the local police and our insurance agent, we arranged to have the car worked on by the body shop at the Traverse City Honda dealer next week, while we are sailing south. Friends of ours who live in Traverse City met us at the body shop and drove us back to the marina in Elk Rapids some 15 miles north (we bribed them with dinner at the nice restaurant where I celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago). So now we are ready to leave tomorrow, but they've changed the forecast (again!) to include thunderstorms and 3- to 5-foot waves. As we were eating dinner a line of severe thunderstorms moved in, so we got pretty wet on our way back to the boat. But now we are safely snug below, wondering if we'll ever get away from Elk Rapids.