Thursday, May 22, 2008

Chicago Fire Boat

Coming in as a close second to finding and photographing the Pileated Woodpecker (see previous post), a big highlight of our Door County vacation was an excursion aboard the Door County Fireboat.
If you love boats and the water, it is well worth a trip to Sturgeon Bay just to take this cruise. Linda and Randy, the new owners are the best tour guides around, and the boat is amazing. http://www.doorcountyfireboatcruises.com/

The fireboat is just one of many old boats in the bay. I could easily spend hours, days, wandering around these gutsy vessels. Here's another gem.


My main goal for this trip was to be able to photograph the lighthouses "from the water". In spite of some rough waves Captain Linda was able to get us pretty close to Sherwood Point Lighthouse and steadied the boat so well that I was able to get a fairly sharp shot.

This is part of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Light Station. The history of both the canal itself and the lighthouse is quite interesting.


I'd never make a good "keeper" of a lighthouse, as I am easily distracted by things like this Coast Guard rescue boat gliding thru the chop.

Heading back toward Sturgeon BayShip Canal Pierhead, we passed thru a working shipyard. It was fascinating to see dry-dock operations from this vantage point. I had to wonder if they use mothballs for this boat. And who scrapes the barnacles off the hull?


Back at the starting point, I could only wish that a boat was taking me the 300 miles or so back to Chicagoland!