Burntside Adventures: Weatherbound

The past two nights we have been tied to a public dock/wall in Houghton Hancock. After leaving Whitefish Point, we went to a marina at Munising, which was delightful. They had great docks at a park, and a bunch of tour boats that make trips to the picture rocks on the south shore of the lake. The Picture Rocks are not pictographs, but cliffs of sandstone that have eroded and are really impressive. We diverted to the shoreline to look at them. There were waterfalls that cascaded off the tops of the cliffs and the colors were amazing. There were a ton of kayakers from the tour boats paddling the edge of the cliffs. As we putted along the shore, taking pictures and Cindy noticed a handheld VHF radio floating in the water, so we circled around and picked it up. I called the tour boat to see if it might be one of theirs and the operator informed me they had lost two of them this week, so we got close to them and handed it over with a boat hook. In Munising we found a local brewery and some good pizza, then took advantage of the good weather and moved on to Marquette, where we stayed a night, got the holding tank pumped out and had a nice meal of whitefish soup and sandwich. We then moved on to Houghton Hancock, taking the route through Portage Lake, knowing the weather was getting ready to turn sour. As we came through the Portage River and Portage Lake, approaching the public dock/wall, I increased speed to about 80% of full throttle, as I usually do toward the end of the day. It's good for the engine. Within just a few minutes, I got a call on the VHF. It was the US Coast Guard, and I thought oh crap, I'm going to get a speeding ticket (at 8 knots), but nope, they just wanted to board us and do a safety inspection. Really nice guys, two of whom had been through the Boy Scout base on Moose Lake. Anyway, they said the only reason they pulled us over was because they need to do a compliance check and we were the only boat on the water. We have been tied up here on the Houghton side just east of the lift bridge over the canal because it's been blowing. The big lake would not be dangerous but really uncomfortable with head seas at 3-4 feet and a very short period, so we will wait until tomorrow to move on to the Apostles for a couple of nights then to Duluth on Saturday, assuming all things mechanical stay good. In the mean time, Houghton has given Cindy some thrift stores to check out and a great hill to bike up for a workout.