Check out was at 11:00 am so we decided to sleep in and have a bigger breakfast. Sammy and I hit the locker room for showers while the boys started the bacon. We wrapped up and pulled out of our slip just after 11:00!
Today’s forecast is just gorgeous. Western winds at 6mph… Lake Michigan has 1’ chop at best. We decided to take our time heading the 20 miles south and enjoy the ride.
It looks like the marina at St Joe is a bit far to walk to town so we’ll likely have to Uber. We’ll plan to check out the shops and restaurants closer to supper so instead of heading in to the marina right away, we decided to anchor out in the lake for some time in the water!
We checked in to the West Basin Marina. Slip 100 is the end of a dock so we are a side tie for easy off/on and have the entire 70 ft to ourselves. The dock master was super helpful explaining the best places to visit and easiest ways to get around St Joe. There is a train track that runs close by… its been lots of fun to watch the bridge swing as the trains go through and luckily, we cannot even hear the sounds from inside the boat!
Town is across the river from the marina so we called a man the dock master recommended to come and pick us up. We had him bring us to a pizza place called Silver Beach Pizza which had come highly recommended and he was eager to repeat! The pizza shop sits in and above the Amtrak station but has a really fun atmosphere. There was about an hour wait for a table (on a Wednesday night!) so we ordered it to go. While we waited, we checked out the compass fountain which was a huge splash pad area right down by the beach.
The city of St Joseph sits up on a bluff overlooking the lake. The fountain, pizza place and Amtrak station are all down by the beach. So once the pizzas were ready, we climbed like 100 steps to get up on the bluff where we found a quiet shaded picnic table to enjoy our meal with an amazing view.
After dinner, we walked down State Street and enjoyed yet another stop at Kilwin’s. Then we walked down to a park by the channel and took a slow walk back to the beach. Once more we climbed the 100 stairs and waited for Mike to pick us back up.
Coco was glad to see us when we got home! We settled in for the night. Tyler and I watched a show while Sammy and Scott cleaned up the dishes.
It was a wonderful day… but we are sure to sleep well!
