THURSDAY JULY 28TH, 2011

First thing this morning I rode my bike down to the neighboring marina to take a photo of this sailboat. It is the WINGNUTS. A 35 foot sailboat that capsized last week in a sailing race from Chicago to Mackinac Island in which two people drowned. It capsized with 8 crew onboard about 12:30 a.m. during a storm with 64 mile per hour winds. They were wearing life jackets and tethered with safety harnesses to the boat. 6 of them were able to unhook their safety straps and be rescued. 7 other boats racing abandoned the race and came the rescue of WINGNUTS crew. The boat was lost sight of.

A few days ago Ross and I heard a radio conversation between a boat and the coast guard. It was very eerie to listen too. The boat had come upon a partially submerged sailboat with it’s sails still up and life jackets floating in it’s companionway. They were finally able to see it’s name and identify it as the missing WINGNUTS.



Ross lined up a rental car from a local place so we can explore inland for the next couple days. Our destination was Traverse City, Michigan to check out a film festival. The rental car had over 99,000 miles on it and was making some suspicious sounds but it did get us there and back.

Ross had researched the festival so knew we could park out at the university and then ride the shuttle bus. Worked out great. Buses ran every 10 minutes or so and you could get on at off at the various venue sites to watch films.





As we wandered along window shopping, we came upon these one of a kind dresses. This one made from popcorn boxes would have been the prefect dress for the film fest. And the cherry necklace is defintely in season right now.

















You could smuggle movie candy in with this one. Notice the pop bottle cap bodice. Wouldn’t you love to see someone wear these dresses at the Academy Awards?

















The film festival is very popular and tickets to many of the films sell out weeks in advance. They have standby lines for the no show tickets so we thought what the heck, and got in line. Things were looking good that we would get in, but the theatre filled just as they got to us.

We did get in to see two other films though before the day was done. It was a fun, interesting day. Good thing we love popcorn because I think we ate more today than we’ve ever eaten in our lives.