Thursday, October 25, 2012

Bay City Sailing

Bay City is a tiny little city, with not a whole lot to offer ... ha ha it's true that Madonna was born here but she refers to it as the arm pit of America.  It's true that they Bay City rollers named their group after this city, but that is only because they were originally called the Saxons, and they wanted a more American sounding name, so they through a dart at a map of the United States and it landed near Bay City.  Those Scottish pop singers had never seen the city. However, Tauk did succeed in finding something awesome to do in this tiny little town.  We went sailing, and it was glorious.  Our sailing trip had been in danger of being cancelled due to bad weather, but at the very last moment, the skies cleared and we were able to enjoy three wonderful hours on the water.  It was absolutely freezing, so we all bundled up in the best we could.  Luckily, the ship's crew had nice, thick, warm comforters for those of us that needed a little extra padding. 



I am obsessed with anything nautical and I love to sail. The ropes, the sails, the masts, the decks, everything on a ship is picturesque to me.  Thus there are a lot of detail shots of the Appledore IV.


I was one happy sailor!  I volunteered to help raise the sails, which was so hard!  The first mate (who was oh so cute, seriously I had a major crush on him plus he was such a nice person, we had an excellent conversation)  had to step in at the last minute to help out our team because I'm sure my wimpy little arms weren't helping all that much.  Our little group, not everyone in the tour group went sailing, had such a blast we shared a lot of laughs and good times.



Going under a draw bridge.














I was one of the few that admitted that I was freezing and would love to take advantage of those comforters they were offering everyone.  Oh it was so cozy!  I could have sailed all day long!



Boat shoes on a boat



After three wonderful hours of blissful sailing, we returned to shore, said our goodbyes to our excellent crew and continued on our way to Detroit.

Today's lunch break was so much fun!  We stopped at Frankenmuth to dine at the Bavarian Inn.  We happened to catch Frankenmuth right in the middle of their Oktoberfest celebrations, so the atmosphere of the entire town was fun, fall and festive!
The Bavarian Inn is quite an impressive establishment.  It is GINORMOUS!  It has 12 huge dinning rooms that are supported by three separate kitchens.  Even though it is so large, there were still two long lines of people waiting to get in for lunch.  I can't possibly imagine the amount of food they go through in one day, it must be staggering!  I had my favorite traditional German meal of weinersnitchel and it was delicious!  We have been lucky with hitting German restaurant during their Oktoberfest week.  We hit it both in Chicago and in Michigan!  How fun!






After lunch we had a little time to explore the town, it was adorable.















Some people in our group opted to go shopping at their Christmas store, it is crazy huge.  Here is a picture of the outside.  Overdone much...?
After our fun afternoon in Frankenmuth. We finished the rest of our drive down to the big city. We didn't actually stay in the city of Detroit, we stayed in Dearborn.   We stayed in the Dearborn Inn which is a gorgeous hotel.  Reference the pictures below..




I loved our stay here!  More on Dearborn in the next couple of posts...

2 comments:

  1. This was a fabulous post! Loved the sailing pictures...kind of wish I could have gone, but I didn't want to leave Dad all alone. We had a good time with the antiques...You got great pictures of the Octoberfest...charming little place.

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  2. Fantastic sailing pics! Looks so fun! Frankenmuth looks like you fell right into a fairy tale. What a charming little town.

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