Michigan: New Buffalo (Day 5)

Day: 70
No Travel

Note:  Before going into today's blog, let me point out that, no, we did not jump back to Canada yesterday.  The blog entry published yesterday dated back to Day 33 of the trip but was never published at that time.  Sorry if that caused anyone confusion.

I did not post a blog yesterday because I did not think anyone would want to read the blow-by-blow on my doing my laundry, which quite honestly was about the most excitement I had yesterday.  The winds continued to blow and get stronger as the day progressed leaving few options for outdoor entertainment.  I think it is the first day on the trip that no pictures were taken by either of us.

Clark managed to be quite productive however.  While I was up at the laundromat, he vacuumed the boat, which I had thought about doing when I got back, so that was a very pleasant surprise to find it done already. Also, he noticed after our trip from South Haven to New Buffalo that we had more water in the bilge, so he pulled out the wrenches and tightened the packing some more.  He even played a little guitar to pass the time.

As dinner time approached, I decided to walk up to Barney's food market and buy a pizza to cook for supper.  I don't remember the last time I used the oven in the boat to cook dinner.  I remember one fourth of July a few years back that I used it to reheat some food, but even that was a long time ago. Well, cooking the pizza turned into a bit of a disaster as the bottom of the crust burned black in the middle, and I mean black with a capital B, while the top still looked rather anemic.  I guess I have to learn the oven's idiosyncrasies if I plan to use it more often.

Today I continued the burned food theme by burning some of the pancakes that I made for breakfast. I'm not used to cooking pancakes on the boat either as we usually don't have time for that luxury.   I noticed on this trip that one of the burners on the stove seems to be higher heat / cook faster than the others.  I had two small fry pans to make the pancakes somewhat in parallel.  One pancake turned out fine; the other burned.  I generally don't mind "well done" food so, unlike the burned pizza, I ate the overcooked pancakes.  I actually ended up scorching two of the three I made for myself.  I gave Clark the ones that turned out well.

Having not ridden my bicycle for the duration of our time here in New Buffalo, I really wanted to go out for a ride.  We walked uptown to buy some groceries first and then when we got back, we pulled the bikes out for a ride.  We first rode out to the beach to see what was happening out there.
We were surprised to see that the wind warranted a two red flag day meaning extreme danger on the water.  Previously, one red flag was the most we had seen.

2 Red Flag Day at New Buffalo, MI 

Not surprisingly the beach and beach parking lot were, for the most part, deserted.  In fact, unlike two days ago when the parking lot was absolutely full of seagulls (all facing towards the wind like rows of soldiers), today only three brave birds faced the wind.   I had to wonder where all they others were hanging out.

After the beach, we headed back through town and out the other side to the town's railroad museum.   The museum offers free admission with a very knowledgeable tour guide who walked us through the museum and gave us the low-down on the displays intermingled with an interesting history of New Buffalo, which grew as a city due to its railroad business.

As the story goes, New Buffalo was the end of the line for the railroad, and anyone going from there to Milwaukee or Chicago had to hang out in town to wait for the steamship to go the rest of the way. Since the steamship travel was so unreliable, people frequently ended up staying in New Buffalo for several days which resulted in the establishment of a number of hotels, restaurants, and tourist-type businesses.

WW II Troop Sleeper Pullman Car at the
New Buffalo Railroad Museum

The tour included walking through two actual train cars.  The troop sleeper car showed the accommodations for traveling troops and also contained pictures and memorabilia from New Buffalo WW II veterans.  The guide, Kim, said that locals are encouraged to donate their items instead of leaving them stuffed in the backs of closets.

Next to and connected with the Pullman car sat a "Chessie" freight car.  Chessie was an actual cat / kitten that was used to represent the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad in advertising campaigns in the 1930s.  The Chessie symbol was printed on the side of the car.

Inside the building was a working HO model railroad setup maintained by a local club.  I learned that HO means Half O where O is another model railroad size.  The buildings in the scene are not to scale as they are not from kits but were handmade to represent the buildings in New Buffalo.  Pelican Lake is included in the display.  We learned that Pelican Lake is an old railroad term used to describe any body of water in a railroad yard where the ash and lime used by the trains was dumped.  Bottom Line - don't swim or go wading in any Pelican Lake near an old railroad!

HO Model railroad with hand-built buildings
and landscape depicting New Buffalo, MI

The New Buffalo, MI roundhouse

As an interesting touch to the New Buffalo railroad history, we learned that the engine used in the Polar Express story came from New Buffalo.  The engine, the Pere Marquette 1225, ceased being used in 1951 and moved to Michigan State University to be on display there in 1957.  The author of the book Polar Express saw the engine often as a child and made the association of the engine number 1225 with 12/25 for Christmas Day and came up with the children's story idea from there.  In the year 2000 the roundhouse from New Buffalo was purchased and relocated to be used in conjunction with the restored engine 1225 which pulls excursion trains over the Great Lakes Central Railroad lines several times a year.

After the tour of the museum we went back to the boat for lunch.  I had hoped for a longer bike ride but it wasn't in the cards for today.  We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon cleaning the dirt marks off the fiberglass to spruce the boat up a bit.  At first Clark was polishing alone, but I decided that I needed something to do, so I went out to assist him.  That should give some indication of my level of boredom in that cleaning appealed to me as a past-time!

Yesterday we talked to the owners of Sno-Daz, and we agreed to get together for dinner tonight.  We met around 6:20 and walked up to Brewster's Italian Cafe.  Our dinner conversation included tales of Sno-Daz great loop trip (they just crossed their wake), discussion on the sale of Sno-Daz which is in the final stages of completion, and recommendations for where to stay in Florida when we get that far.   Even though there is a chill in the air, after dinner we walked up to Oink's Dutch Treat ice cream shop for a yummy dessert.  It's never too cold for ice cream!

While I worked on my blog, Clark channel surfed his way around the TV ad nauseum trying to find a good channel to watch.  Our one good station last night where we watched 'So You Think You Can Dance' was too pixelated to be viewable tonight.  So far I've seen 5 minutes of Law and Order, 5 minutes of Brooklyn Nine Nine, snippets of several old movies, and finally he landed on Bay Watch on Cozi TV, and though I can't fathom why, he remained glued there.  If I ask, he'll say he was waiting for the weather to come on, but I know that Cozi TV is not a station that provides a weather report.

The water has settled down this afternoon as the wind finally subsided.  The boat is no longer being jostled around as the water is as flat as can be.  We could leave here tomorrow if we wished, but Thursday looks to be a good travel day as well.  Since our reservation in Chicago is for Thursday night, we plan on waiting that one additional day before moving on.