Towns along Lake Michigan

The shoreline to Frankfort, Michigan is part of the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore Park.

With 480-foot-tall sand dunes, white beaches and a backdrop of forests, views from the lake are simply breathtaking.

The town of Frankfort is a residential community on a protected lake , with a short walk to downtown with restaurants, pubs, grocery stores, a bookstore, pharmacy, and other town services.

Notable summertime events include the Frankfort Art Fair and Collector Car Show in mid-August.

The Frankfort Municipal Marina provides a large amount of transient slips in a beautiful park-like atmosphere.

This is Fred, my new swan friend. He paddled across the lake to visit me and he knew he found a sucker. Out came the bread.

He was very appreciative and hung around through half a loaf of rye bread.

Swans are quite big and beautiful, and this was a first for me, so we hung out together for a while enjoying the day, taking it as it comes.

Coming in from Lake Michigan, we enter Lake Muskegon, which is large enough to have a paper mill, a cement factory, a car and passenger ferry that goes across Lake Michigan daily, and a town that is spread out around the lake.

Coming into the channel, we pass the USS Silversides Submarine Museum and put that on our list of things to do while in Muskegon.

Farther along the lake, we turn into the Great lakes Marina, next to where the old Milwaukee Clipper is berthed, a passenger ship from days gone bye.

We tie up on the inside of a long pier that serves as a breakwater for incoming waves. You can see the ship in the background.

We also find ourselves next to the terminal for the current Lake Express Ferry to Milwaukee, a cat boat (two hulls) that carries cars and people across Lake Michigan daily.

It backs out of the terminal, turns, and heads out the channel into the lake.

USS Silversides is the most famous surviving submarine of WWII. She sunk more ships (30 Japanese vessels and damaged 14) and took down more tonnage than any other surviving WWII submarine. She rescued 2 American pilots and laid 16 mines on separate patrols. The movie Below was filmed on board Silversides.

The engine rooms contain 4 Fairbanks and Morse 1600 horsepower diesel engines, which are fully operational today. Much to Bob's delight, the engineers turned on the engines for visitors touring the inside of the sub today.

The mess hall could hold 24 people, but it seems to me that they would have to be pretty small.

The crew's quarters were made of very thin mats and different people would sleep on the same bed at different hours. Yuck!

We also toured the USCGC McLANE, a 125 foot Coast Guard boat built in 1927. During World War II, McLANE was used to patrol the Bering sea off the coast of Alaska to protect against enemy contact. During the war McLANE was outfitted with a one pound cannon, a 50 caliber machine gun, and depth charge racks.

 

 

A one pound cannon in a woman's hand, now that's dangerous!