Great Lakes Cruise

 It’s been awhile since I’ve posted to my blog so here is a brief update, especially if you aren’t on FB. Well I just got back from – yep, a cruise. This was the Great Lakes, Michigan and Superior. With port stops along the way. What beautiful country. I was not real familiar with this whole area so I enjoyed this trip. This was a new way to cruise, capacity of ship only 202 guest and only 135  on board. The ship was small, obviously, which is nice for docking but not so much for cruising. I felt a little claustrophobic on “sea” days. Otherwise, we were in very walkable areas and I was able to walk and wander quite a bit.

I was solo and there were other solos on board. However, there were many couples and several times I felt especially alone and noticed the absence of David more than previously. But I did not dwell on this and instead focused on where I was and what could I go explore. It’s mainly due to David that financially and emotionally I can do this traveling so I felt somewhat obligated to push myself to get out and about. Each time I took a small step outside my comfort zone, I felt more empowered and able to take bigger steps. And I’ve got to admit, it is fun to do only the museums I want to see, read only the exhibits I want to read, turn in early or stay up late and no one counted how many deserts I ate!

This is not a travel log in that I’m not describing all the places I visited. I did do photo highlights and post most on FB. As usual learned interesting history and thoroughly enjoyed all the new sights. Met many new people as I ate with different folks at the open dinner seating.

I’d say Mackinac Island was the highlight, enhanced by meeting cousin Scott and Heather there. That made for an extra special day of exploration. The locks and lift bridges were all fascinating. I walked across at least 2 lift/draw bridges and was only a little nervous they might need to go up before I got across. LOL. Interesting learning about different bridges, engineering feats for raising in different ways to allow large ships to pass. The traffic quickly backed up as cars had to stop until the bridge was back functioning as a “road”.

Some photos of us passing under a double decker lift bridge. 

First view of the ship as we prepare to embark in Milwaukee (not Chicago as originally planned).

Some of Chicago buildings as seen from my architectural boat trip  before my Great Lakes cruise.
My airplane lunch. It was really quite tasty. I love airplane food, mostly for the unique plating and the ideal of meals on a plane.

I'll end here, I have many more photos but I need to figure out why not all my photos are available to me to upload to this blog. I want to find them as I had a lot of fun with daily selfie of my outfits. If I do say so myself, I had several cute outfits. And its all about how you look, right? I did it for future packing purposes and it became a fun challenge to find a way to photo myself in my tiny stateroom.

Hope you enjoy reading and perhaps I'll post more photos soon. It's hard to play catch up after 16 days on the water but I wanted to enjoy my trip and blogging is a bit tricky for me still. Until next time!