Day 29 – Across Lake Michigan

Regular followers of this blog will know that I am partial to riding on ferries. Up until today, I have not been able to incorporate a ferry in my coast to coast journey; but that omission has now been put straight. Just a couple of miles along the waterfront from downtown Milwaukee, a fast catamaran departs twice daily for Muskegon, taking two and a half hours to reach the opposite shore of this truly Great Lake (the largest lake entirely within the borders of one country, apparently). You enter a new time zone when you arrive in Muskegon, so it is as if you took three and a half hours to get there. And since I fell into a deep sleep after an hour or so, I wouldn’t honestly know the difference.

I think it was probably a reaction to the motion of the boat, which was wobbly enough to make walking around a tricky business. I stayed up on the sun deck for maybe fifteen minutes; but it was too too windy to remain outside. The weather was fine; but this is a serious body of water, like the sea but without the salt. Once Milwaukee’s skyline had slipped below the horizon, there was nothing to see in any direction except blue water.

After checking out of my downtown apartment, in the sumptuous old Mackie Building, I had a couple of hours free in Milwaukee before I left, during which I managed to grab breakfast in the public market, which was a very cool establishment just on the edge of downtown, full of tempting produce and funky stalls. It reminded me of Granville Island market in Vancouver, if that helps. It helped me, because I was there only a month ago. Anyway, well worth a look, should you be either in Milwaukee or Vancouver. Or both.

I also found time to record a TV interview with the local CBS affiliate station, although I see no evidence that my interview made it to their website. I was visiting the life-size statue of Henry Winkler, on the attractive Riverside Walk, also known as the “Bronze Fonz” (if you are of a certain age, you may recall that Happy Days was set in these parts). There was a camera crew in attendance because overnight his head had been painted black. I chatted to the cameraman and he and his reporter decided that I was a more interesting story, so we did a two minute interview on the spot. They said it would be in the local news at noon on their channel, and then on the internet. But I can’t find it, so maybe something bigger came up!

So now I am in Michigan, my tenth state of this adventure. I liked downtown Muskegon, which had some interesting old buildings, some cool public art, and some good choices for food and drink. I ate in the Unruly Brewery, enjoying their choice in music and an excellent burger and IPA. But at 7pm, the pub quiz started so I took the chance to slip away to my motel, 25 minutes cycle away, through suburbs that started out nice enough and got increasingly more run down and poor looking. These were the worst road surfaces I had seen in the country and the streets had a real sense of being left behind. My motel is a bit the same, although the room is fine and it was certainly very cheap. It seems you get what you pay for, so no complaints. But the Wi-Fi is poor here, so apologies for the lack of decent photos. I will correct that tomorrow when I return to the more upscale level of establishment to which I have become accustomed.