Fort Mackinac

After our carriage tour through Mackinac Island State Park we decided to disembark at Fort Mackinac and see what that was all about. When we first walked in there were some re-enactments going on. The first one, which we only caught the tail end of, was a firing demonstration.

Then we saw a demonstration of a court marshal. It was interesting because they read the case out of the old record books so what we saw actually did happen, including the verdict. If I remember correctly the solider was in trouble for not finishing a building painting project and instead enjoying some mead.....then again if I were stuck on an island in 1812 I might have done the same thing ;)

They had a lot of neat exhibits set up but what we found most fascinating were the sections about the soldier's life in the fort and on the island. The one area was the shower/washroom building. One of the signs there talked about how when this was installed the doctor on staff made every soldier take *weekly* showers much to the complaint of many of the soldiers....ewwww!!!! I feel gross if I go 48 hours without a shower let alone a week!!!

 

 

What they used to vent steam before fans were invented

They also had examples of the beds the soldier's slept in. It became very clear that if Kris and I had been married back in 1812 I would have been marrying the Jolly Green Giant....

Lastly since the fort was on the main hill of the island it gave us a perfect vantage point to take some amazing scenery pictures...

The Grand Hotel

A Ferry!!!

"Downtown" Mackinac

The Harbor (and you can see M-1...the highway)

The park right in front of the fort

Mackinac!!!!!

So as I've already stated no cars or motorized vehicles are allowed on the island (there are some ambulances and fire trucks that are only used for emergencies). Consequently there are 3 main ways to get around the island: on foot, biking and my personal favorite, by horses!!!! It seemed like most people there probably had their own horse so I felt quite at home. We could have hired some hack horses and ridden ourselves around the island however since this was our first trip up there we decided to use the horse drawn carriage tour company. I forgot to take pictures of the first half of the tour so you will have to live with my descriptions. For the first half they take you around town and give you an idea of where the different stores/museums are and show you where some of the nicest hotels are on the island. The famous one that most people associate with Mackinac is the Grand Hotel. The movie "Somewhere in Time" was shot partially at the Grand Hotel. Unfortunately Kris and I's nightly hotel budget was not in the $250/night a range so we stayed at a much smaller hotel in the "downtown" area of the island.We will come back to my pictures of the Grand Hotel when I detail Kris and I's personal bike tour of the island because there is a good story that goes along with it....
Back to the horses, so the first half of the carriage tour drops you off not coincidentally at the Carriage Museum!! In addition they also had a butterfly museum set up as well which you could tour for a nominal fee. This was probably the most impressive butterfly museum I have ever been to. The wide variety of butterflies was amazing as can be seen below (I uploaded a ton I know....they are just all so good I couldn't decide!):

We found a friendly one!

After a quick tour through the carriage museum we boarded a different carriage to take us through the part of the island that is a protected park (if you pick wildflowers it's a couple of hundred dollars per flower). They used draft horses for these carriages and Kris was fascinated with how tall they are....

Had my father been on this carriage tour he would have loved it because our tour guide enjoyed telling the same corny jokes as he does! One of the neatest parts of the island is what's called Arch Rock. My nickname for it was "the rock with the hole in the middle". Scientifically of course there is an explanation for how the middle section was worn away over time; however, remembering that some of the original occupants of the island were Native Americans of course legends abound about the rock.  The most popular story tells of a young beautiful Native American girl who lived on the island with her father and their tribe. One night she encounters a handsome man and falls madly in love. The man is a "sky man" and therefore invites her to marry him and join him in his home in the sky. She accepts however when she tells her father he becomes engraged. Determined to turn her into an obedient daughter he makes her sit on the top of a large rock until she has decided to listen to his wisdom. However instead of coming down she sits up there continually crying. Eventually her tears wear a hole in the middle of the rock and one night her lover descends and carries her off to his home in the sky.
There was also a beautiful outlook up there that gave us some great views of the shoreline and the lake. Here are some of our Arch Rock pictures....there will be more in a later post when I detail our bike trip around the island.....

Okay that's a more than long enough post for now...tomorrow will cover our visit to Fort Mackinac!

Ferries!

I promise one of these days I'll actually get up to date...in the meanwhile back to last July and our Michigan trip!!!

Trivia Question: Where is the only registered U.S. Highway that *does not* allow motorized vehicles on it?
Answer: Mackinac Island!
Needless to say there is no bridge to get to Mackinac (since you can't have your car anyways) so the only way to reach the island is by ferry. The ferry trip takes about 15-20 min to get from the mainland to the island. It was pretty cool and since on the way over to the island we caught the last ferry we had the whole upper deck of the ferry to ourselves.

That was the first kind of Ferry which we took *over* to the island. When we arrived we decided the first thing we needed to do was find our hotel *duh* since we were carrying our luggage. I knew our hoel was on Main Street so I figured it couldn't be far away....well about 10-15 min later (did I mention we were carrying our not very light luggage?) we finally arrived in front of the Murray Hotel. I was quite happy to see on arrival that there was a fudge shop on the main floor in our hotel..mmm....After we got settled in our cute (but albeit little) hotel room we decided we needed to find food. Let me pause for a moment to mention one of my favorite perks of the Murray Hotel....each night they bring you *warm* chocolate chip cookies before bed....ahhhh.... :) Anyways so back to our food hunt...we decided, once again, that we couldn't go wrong with pizza. Until we took a crash course in local economics....if there is only one pizza shop on the island there is no competition therefore the prices can be whatever they please....including $4/slice for a slice that is maybe 1/3 to 1/2 the size of something you'd get a Sbarros!! Pizza that whole trip was cursed!!!
After a short walk around to see what we could in the dark we headed to bed excited to get up the next morning and explore the island with the help of my favorite animal...the horse!!!

Pirates Cove...

So we are actually backtracking a bit here but I found these pictures *after* I posted my last update so here we go....
Now *before* we had the pizza lunch and the sailboat trip, we went to Pirates Cove which is this chain of adventure parks in Michigan. The one we went to had 2 mini golf courses, water slide, bumper boats, go karts, zipline and a high ropes course. We elected just to do the mini golf, ziplining and high ropes course.
First up...pirate themed mini-golf. Not a bad course and of course I think I lost to Kris both times but it was still fun!

Next we did ziplining (no pictures) it wasn't a super long ziplining course but it was really fun and it made me want to find a really long one to try!
The high ropes course was also a lot of fun. I got around *much* faster than Kris (hehe!) It was something neither of us had done before but a good time was had by all!

Next onto our favorite part of the trip....Mackinac!!!

Happy New Year, Christmas, Thanksgiving etc.. and continue on with Michigan!

So it's been a few months....nothing super new to report....so I will pick up where I left off....I do have to say I got a new computer that I plan to keep with me so I can hopefully get blog posts up waaaay more often then once every 3 months.....

So the next day we decided to catch a ride on the Manitou for a sailing tour around the lakes. Neither Kris nor I had ever been on a sailboat this big before so it was amazing to watch the crew and how they handled the sails/boat. We also learned they do overnights (and longer trips) on the boat and you can sleep on the deck underneath the stars! Add that to our eventual "to-do" list!

For this trip however we just sailed north for about 45 min and then turned around and came back. We did split a half bottle of wine and overall had a *really* nice afternoon.

Me trying to take a picture to prove how crystal clear the water actually is...

Funny story from earlier that day....so during this whole trip anytime we decided to eat pizza our meal was cursed and this day was the start of that curse. We didn't have a lot of time for lunch before we had to get to the boat so we decided a pizza place is simple/fast enough. I order a personal size cheese pizza....he orders hummus with pita bread. Nothing in that order could *possibly* take more than oh say 15 min. Somehow it takes 45 min for our food to arrive. At which point we had about 5-10 min to shove it in our face and get out the door. A big part of why our food took so long was we had one of the most inept waitresses. Just one of those that walked by our table about 5 times before realizing we needed refills etc... so I was totally set to leave a small tip....until she decided to give us a bag of their homemade potato chips (which were AMAZING) at which point I felt guilted into leaving her a normal/generous tip...*sigh* I'm such a sucker!