Down to the Lake

Lake Michigan marks our entry into the eastern time zone, (at least after we cross it) one of the last milestones that measure our progress. Our mileage is now up to over 2600 miles (actual, not from the route sheet)out of 3600, so we are also down to our last thousand miles. I am both excited about getting closer to home, and sad to think that our journey will soon be ending. I guess one thing that I have noticed more often lately is that the morning is fun, and the afternoon seems like work. I still enjoy seeing the tidy farms of this area, but one corn field looks an awful lot like the 5000 before it. It seems so long ago that I was overjoyed to see ANYTHING green and alive springing out of the desert.

Today our route was short and sweet. We headed up out of Fond du Lac, by the shore of Lake Winnebago.


Then we steered basically east to hit the shore of Lake Michigan. Our route took us through Amish country, with lots of unique farms. None of my horse and buggy pictures were clear enough to look put here.

and of course cute animals like this little pony.


We then went north a ways and found ourselves in the port town of Manitowoc. We arrived way before our motel rooms were ready, so a number of us including Ilkka and Kent ate lunch and then went down to the port, where there is a really nice maritime museum. We saw the displays of merchant marine vessels, and also toured a submarine that is moored alongside the museum, much like the Torsk in Baltimore Harbor.

Here is Kent trying to take the sub out onto the Lake.

We headed to Ponderosa for dinner, but stopped off at a laundromat to start a load of clothes since we wouldn't have a chance to do it tomorrow due to the ferry boat ride over to Michigan. After dinner we walked back to the laundromat and tossed the stuff in the dryer, finished it up, and came back to the motel. We can sleep in late tomorrow morning, then head down to the Ferry at 11 a.m. for our four hour ride.