Captain's Choice blog: St. Joseph, MI, Home of the "beach bugs"

St. Joseph is home to "beach bugs", 20 of them to be exact...delightful bumble bees, caterpillars, snails and ladybug sculptures created by regional artists. These "beach bugs" will be auctioned off Sept. 24 at their Wine Festival and Public Art Auction. This is definitely a very family friendly town with a large playground at the beach, a Curious Kids Museum, a large enclosed carousel and a huge splash pad. They also have free movies every Saturday during the summer beginning at dusk in the park.

Sunday we arrived in St. Joseph and stayed at the marina. They have a free wall on the south side of the harbor but after experiencing the wall in Grand Haven and all the rocking and rolling we opted for the marina. The town is closer to the wall so we walked over and there were 3 looper boats. We stopped and chatted with Monica and Rick from Moni Jean. We were happy to meet them as we had been following their blog, which had been referred to us by another looper. After sitting on their boat we decided we would move to the wall on Monday morning as the winds were calm and the wall would not rock and it is more convenient to downtown St. Joseph.

Benton Harbor is the next town over and we had heard about Wolf's marine store that has just about everything so we biked there, about 1.5 miles away. With the 89 degree temp and humidity I couldn't wait to get to the store and in the AC...only problem...it was a warehouse, no AC just a few fans. Always fun to look around but we think we have everything we need.

Currently, Tuesday morning we are sitting in the boat waiting for the rain to stop so we can head to Chicago. The weathermen are still forecasting high winds starting tomorrow for 3-4 days and we have tickets for the Cubs game on Saturday...so as soon as the rain stops we will head out.