Not a down day, just realilty

Decided to hang around Drummond Island one more day.  Needed to rest up, regroup, recoop, re-energize, whatever it takes.  Besides they had rental cars available and we needed to get some groceries and change our Canadian money over to American moola.  Plus last night they were talking small craft advisories for today and we don’t cruise in those conditions.  

Being an early riser has it's benefits

I got up early after a really good nights sleep, exhaustion will do that to you.  Was up by 5:30 a.m.  Now before you go all WHAAAT on me, that is pretty normal for me.  Besides it was so completely worth it.  i was rewarded by a beautiful morning sky.  Mike slept in for a couple of hours, which he so deeply deserved.  Knowing that we were going to be hanging around today made it a bit less stressful.  Although as fate would have it the small craft advisory was cancelled and the weather turned out to be actually really good.  Darn it, we could have gone, no we decided to stay.  This is a constant battle in ones head (at least ours and any other cruiser if their honest) is, am I making the right decision as to whether we stay put or cruise.  Your life is all dependent on the weather, wind, waves, etc.  Stressful, yes, worth it, well in all honesty we have not made a decision on that. 

I had a long discussion today with another boater while I was waiting on some laundry and the topic of “are you having fun yet?” came up.  That’s a tough question to answer.  Is this cruising life easy? No.  I know to those who live on land you might be thinking “what is she saying that for, they have it easy living the dream”.  Yes we are living our dream, but as most folks know dreams are not always easy or what you expect.  Are there struggles, frustration, fear, exhaustion, impatience,  and more, hell yes, but those things exist in everyone’s life in one form or another.  What I have come to find out as have other cruisers I have talked to is that information you read doesn’t always address the above mentioned feelings, nor do some boaters even want to discuss them.  Now don’t get me wrong, as I have said several times before we are truly blessed to be able to do what we are doing and we have seen and done things that most people only read about.  We are excited to be able to share this experience with each other.  But there are days when you look at each other and say “are we having fun yet?”  

I do believe though in the two short months of cruising we have changed (for the better).  We have learned to work together, even better than before.  We have learned to be a little more patient with each other and that when you are yelling it is usually because you can’t hear over the sound of the engines. It’s the old "yelling to you not at you".    I personally am learning to be a little tougher and that I can do certain things that I never thought or dreamt I could.  Will we continue this journey?  Most likely.  Are we sure of this?  Not everyday, but most.  Are we happy we started?  Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t days you just want to pack it in and go home.  But we smile, we rest, and we do it all over again.  Everyday is a new experience.

Oh my I told my boating friend, Donadee, that I would start to tell the truth on my blog and not sugar coat things so there it is.  

Now on to our adventures in Drummond Island.  Where was I?  Oh yes a beautiful non stressed morning.  We decided to take advantage of the rental cars they have available.  Depending on what your needs are for the day depends on which one you get.  Mike and I only need to get to the bank, grocery store and sundry shop. As luck would have it they were all pretty much on the same block.  

Everything we needed was right there.

Look who was peeking out the car roof.

The only grocery store in town was an IGA.  They had everything we needed but because they were the only thing in town the prices were pretty high.  As Mike put it they have us over a barrel.  But we contributed to the local economy.  I went next door to the sundry shop and bought a new can opener and Mike picked up a T-shirt.  We stopped and got a little lunch and took a drive around the Island.  it was good to spend some time off the boat.  First time either of us had been in a car in over a month.  Afterwards we returned to the boat, I had some more laundry to do and Mike worked on tomorrow’s cruising plans along with tracking down another Auto Pilot so he could install it at the lower helm.  Then figure out where to have it shipped to since we have no idea what port we will be at when it arrives in 3-5 days.   (There’s that frustration part rearing it’s ugly head.)  We had the rental for as long as we wanted so we decided ice cream for dinner, then stop by the marina to the lending library and pay up the tab so we could get an early start out Thursday morning.  

The road to the rock quarry

These were there street signs

You can tell we are in the Yooper!

Oh let’s talk about this “rental car”.  When I signed up for one this morning the young lady behind the counter said “I was just filling up the Mercedes and will leave the keys in it so you folks can take that one when you are ready”.  I looked at her with a face of amazement and said “MERCEDES, are you kidding me?”  She kind of sweetly smiled at me and said “don’t get to excited you haven’t seen it yet.”  So I went back to the boat, collected up my stuff (and Mike) and we went up to the marina office to pick it up.  Now remember all she said was that it was a blue Mercedes and it would be big enough for the two of us.  Well when we arrived at the office there was a beautiful 2 seater Mercedes convertible.  I looked at Mike and said “this couldn’t be it, could it?”  and just as I said that the Customs Officer comes out of her office and said “ya looking for the rentals?, they are over there”.  Around the corner was a line of old “beater cars” that they used for rentals.  I swear I think they must have been all the owners old vehicles from years past.  But as Mike and I both agreed anything with wheels seemed like a luxury car to us, no matter how bad it rattled and shook. It took us where we needed to go and got us back in one piece and we were grateful. 

It's been a quiet evening, tonight we have hopes of seeing the meteor shower.  Tomorrow we are off to St. Ignace, should be about a 6 hour run if the weather cooperates.