2002 Trip: The Straits and Mackinac Island

Scrabble scores -- looks like Ed won this game

Friday, October 4, 2002 took us to Mackinac Island. We took the ferry from St. Ignace and spent the day on the island. The weather had turned cool and rainy, so in the morning we holed up in the motorhome, avoiding the rain and playing Scrabble.

By late morning we were on the ferry, bound for Mackinac Island which is situated in the Straits of Mackinac, east of the Big Mac Bridge.

We rode the carriages behind teams of horses and enjoyed the car-free ambiance of the island. Mackinac gets visitors for the fall color season, but by late October the Great Lakes can be a cold and treacherous place to be. The ferries run limited schedules. Many businesses on the island close after fall color.

The north shore of the Straits with Mackinac Island in the distance

Stan and Val had not been back to island since John and Liesl's wedding in 1998, so we had a good time having lunch at Mission Point Resort, the site of their wedding.  Ed and I have been to the island many times. My first visit there was on our honeymoon in 1968. Ed, being a native Michiganian (I refuse to call us "Michiganders"), had visited Mackinac numerous times as a kid.

Val (left) and Wanda with the Mission Point Moose --
I look like I have had one too many days of camping!

The views of the Straits and of the Bridge from the state park in St. Ignace are stunning. Just seeing the Big Mac Bridge is always an uplifting experience for me.

The Mackinac Bridge, from the St. Ignace shore -- October 2002

The Bridge somehow marks Michigan as a place where people work together to get big stuff done, like building a roadway across five miles of water. Michigan, with its Upper Peninsula and Yoopers (think UP-ers, but pronounce it YOU-purrs) and Lower Peninsula (the trolls live below the bridge), became even more of a Great Lakes State when the two peninsulas were united by the Bridge. Even us trolls in the Lower Peninsula defend the Upper Peninsula with vehemence.

We are one state with lots of geography. Period. End of lecture. . .and end of today's blog post.

Tomorrow's post: Straits to Wisconsin Farm

A side note: I planned five blog posts for this week -- one for each day of the work week -- and then discovered that I had taken photographs on the sixth day of the trip, a Saturday. So there will be a final post tomorrow. The posts have not appeared first thing in the morning this week. It has taken me much longer to write and edit than I anticipated. There have been a few tears. And there has been an email/computer/wireless issue. Ah, one perseveres.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler