Mackinaw City, MI

Having enjoyed our day with the sisters we were late in arriving to our campground but everything went well.  Tom & Julia joined us soon after we arrived and we had a quick fajita griddle dinner.  It was so fun to have them with us for one more day.

We went to church in the Cheboygan Branch.  The building was very similar to the Riggins building and we were sitting in an opened up room to the chapel.  We were lucky Tom & Julia saved us some seats!  It was a good little branch.  Even though it was fast Sunday we decided to have one more meal with the Mumfords before they had to head back to Detroit.  We walked to the lake and played games before they had to leave.  I feel bad that we didn’t get any pictures of our fun Sunday with the Mumfords.

Monday was my birthday and it was a truly great day.  I wanted a hotcake breakfast cooked on my birthday griddle so I made one and we really enjoyed it.  Then we gathered up and headed by ferry to Mackinac Island.  It was a quick 16 minute ride before we disembarked on the very picturesque island.  They banned motor vehicles in 1898 so all traffic is by bicycle and horse drawn vehicles.  There is a permanent population of 500 and they get between 600,000 and 1,000,000 visitors annually.  We learned recently that people who are not locals are called fudgies because they travel to the area and buy fudge!  We certainly wanted the designation to be official so we bought some fudge!  We wanted to get the horse-drawn carriage tour of the island.  We bought our tickets and then let the kids do the Mirror Maze while we waited.  While they did the maze I talked to the ticket person.  He was a middle age man.  He said he lives on the mainland and just works six months out of the year and spends the rest of his time traveling.  The first tour guide we got was excellent.  It was so fun to hear the history of the island and how life is there.  David and I had been interested in the island because it is the home of the Grand Hotel.  Both of us had seen the 1970’s film “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour which was filmed there.  I had looked into staying there but it is predictably expensive!  At the top of the island you change tour carriages.  Our 2nd guide was brand new and from Romania so the 2nd part of the tour was not as interesting though we did get to see a very cool stone arch.  The tour operator said we had 10 minutes to see it.  There were so many people it took about that long!  When we returned to our carriage someone had hopped on the carriage who wasn’t supposed to and displaced us!  We didn’t want to cause a fuss but of course every carriage was very carefully loaded so getting the next carriage was problematic! The next driver very kindly squeezed us in and we finished the tour.  We had a good lunch in an Irish pub, bought the required fudge and headed back to the mainland.  We relaxed for a bit and then headed to our Lumberjack Show.  The show was fun with a good display of chopping, sawing, and log rolling.  They did a gag where they pretended to make a carving of a bunny but in the end made a chair.  They were looking for a small person to come try the chair and picked Zina.  She got to keep the chair.  It brought a flashback to that happening to one of my siblings!  It turned out it was Julia at the World’s Fair in 1974.  David and I tried to watch Somewhere in Time after we got the kids in bed but we didn’t get very far before we got too sleepy.  This day will be a great birthday memory. 

We drove away from Mackinaw City to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over the Mackinac Bridge.  It is an amazing 5 mile long bridge with the longest span between anchorages in the western hemisphere.  We were very lucky it was not windy!  Apparently the bridge is built to sway like 15 feet in either direction.  I would not have enjoyed that.  If you are nervous driving across the bridge they will let you pull over and you can get a driver to take you over.  There was a very spectacular view from the bridge.