Ludington State Park ~ Day 2

Wednesday, June 7th ~ brrr 🥶 cold, 40’s during the night and by 10:30am warmed up to 59* and inside Ruby it was 67*. Stayed warm with a big breakfast & relaxing inside for the morning. Left to checkout the town of Ludington. We found this to be an all American town, for every house or business had flowers, either planted, in pots or hanging everywhere and American Flags! Flowers up & down the medians and they lined the sides of the roads! We drove throughout the town finding all we’d needed for the next few days and more! Stopped at a Blarney EZ Mart for diet cokes and the cashier gave me a “pop” punch card so after 7 drinks my next one was free! Score! 🙌 Drove to Bish’s RV to see if “Josh the RV Nerd” was there but he wasn’t! 😔 We watch his videos on YouTube. Next adventure was to Lowe’s for a few items Tim needed to lock our refrigerator better. Since we are a traveling earthquake, the refrigerator will sometimes open about an inch even with the manufacturer lock so it’s time to remove and make it permanent. I enjoyed looking through the garden section to see all the flowers I can’t grow living in zone 10. Wow, were their plants much more expensive! We then used the good cell signal while in the parking lot…thank you Lowe’s! ❤️ Now it’s that time of day to check out a local brewery. Stopped in at Jamesport Brewery. We tried Perch Fingers served with a cherry sauce, which was amazing! Tim tried a Blueberry Wheat & Westcoast IPA while I had a blueberry mule. Overall good not great. Directly across the street was a Kirby Vacuum Sales and repair shop! Brings back memories! Drove through town some more and came upon the Ludington Car Ferry that went to Milwaukee. The SS Badger is last coal-fired passenger/car vessel that crosses the Great Lakes. The Pere Marquette would carry 30 fully loaded train freight cars across. Next we tried to walk out to the Ludington North Breakwater Light but the waves were crashing up and spraying us so we decided to turn around since it was cold and nothing worse then being cold & wet! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Back to the campground where we decided to take a bike ride to the other side of the park. Well us Floridians didn’t last too long in the cold …even with gloves and jackets on! Came back and grilled fish for dinner, then chatted with our neighbors for awhile. Tim went over to the beach area to get a sunset picture with the lighthouse. Time to get warm! Traveled 27 miles today.

Ludington – census 7,655 in 2020, elevation 591 ft. The town was originally named Pere Marquette, then later named after the industrialist James Ludington, whose logging operations the village developed around. Ludington was incorporated as a City in 1873. The area boom in the late 19th century was due to these sawmills and also the discovery of salt deposits. By 1892, 162 million board feet of lumber and 52 million wood shingles had been produced by the Ludington sawmills. With all of this commerce occurring, Ludington became a major Great Lakes shipping port.

In 1875, the Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad began cross-lake shipping operations with the sidewheel steamer SS John Sherman. It became apparent quite early that the John Sherman was not large enough to handle the volume of freight and the F&PM Railroad contracted with the Goodrich Line of Steamers to handle the break bulk freight out of the Port of Ludington. In 1897, the F&PM railroad constructed the first steel car ferry, the Pere Marquette. This was the beginning of the creation of a fleet of ferries to continue the rail cargo across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. The fleet was also expanded to carry cars and passengers across the lake. By the mid-1950s, Ludington had become the largest car ferry port in the world. Unfortunately, due to disuse and declining industry, this fleet eventually dwindled. Currently only one carferry, the SS Badger makes regular trips across the lake from Ludington, one of only two lake-crossing car ferries on Lake Michigan.

SS Badger – Launched on September 6, 1952. Length 410 ft 6 inches. It was first constructed as a railroad car ferry with a reinforced hull for ice breaking. The railroad car ferry concept on Lake Michigan was facing serious economic troubles during the 1980s and by November 1988, Badger was the only vessel running. She was the last of the 14 ferries based in Ludington remaining in service. On November 16, 1990, facing bankruptcy, Bowden laid up Badger, ending 93 years of railway car ferry service out of Ludington and 98 years on Lake Michigan as a whole. Now Badger can carry 620 passengers, 180 automobiles, also tour buses, RVs, motorcycles, and commercial trucks. It is the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes. Typically, Badger completes a trip across Lake Michigan in about four hours, covering 60 miles. SS Badger rarely misses a sailing due to weather.

Bish’s RV– is a “supercenter” for RV parts and accessories. In 1989, one of Bish’s grandsons wanted to purchase an RV from a local dealer. When he didn’t like the offer the dealer gave him, he tried to buy the RV directly from the manufacturer, but he had to become an RV Dealer by purchasing six RV’s first. Thus, Bish’s RV was born. “Josh the RV Nerd” as he’s known as on YouTube does reviews of their RV’s and trailers on the lot. He used to work for his father’s company but when his dad sold the RV business, Josh went to work for Bish’s doing what he love.

Jamesport Brewing Company – Opened March of 2000 with a goal of serving great beer and food in downtown Ludington. More than two decades later, JBC has become a place where friends gather to enjoy a pint and a bite. There’s a beer garden & a tap room. There’s a full bar, restaurant side and Red’s Room, named after the owner of the saloon that operated in our historic building in the late 1800s.

Kirby Vacuum, Handcrafted in the US, is known as the most powerful, ultimate deep cleaning aluminum constructed vacuum that gets the dirt other vacuums leave behind. For over 100 years, Kirby owners from across the world have raved about their clean homes and long-lasting Kirby Systems.