After a delightful drive through Minnesota and the Northern tip of Wisconsin, we entered the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan - and paused for a couple of days to visit our new MI friends the Anderson's who we met in AZ - and who are our favorite AZ doggie sitters. Buddy loves them and so do we! It was nice to kick back and tend to a few household chores and just visit. We were very impressed with the neatness of all the properties as we drove along Hwy 2 through all 3 States - neatly groomed / mowed and trimmed. We decided that dealers in lawnmowers and boats (there are an amazing number of lakes and waterways) must do an awesome business in this part of the country.
After our enjoyable pause on the UP we toured over to the Mackinac (pr. Mackinaw) Bridge area and camped in a lovely campsite on the South shore of lake Huron near Mackinaw City (spelling difference is deliberate). This area has a lot of history dating back to the early 1600's and earlier. The phrase "from furs to fudge" is common to describe this area - early fishing and fur trading and now tourism with fudge factories and fast food etc. - fishing and the the fur trade were big in the early years then the benefits of tourism helped restore and re - create the area that was once known as Michilimackinac Island (now wrap your tongue around that one!!!!!) and Straits (before the bridge was built between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron).
We took a jet boat ride over to the island where motor vehicles have been banned since 1898 - so it has an amazing ambiance of character and odor - 400 - 500 people live on the island full time and in the summer there are about 700 horses (most of them winter on the UP) serving all kinds of necessary work tasks on the island - freight, waste management, taxis, private vehicles etc. They even have a honey wagon going around picking up you know what!
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| "Honey Wagon" on Mackinac Island |
We enjoyed a guided horse and carriage tour around the area then explored a bit on foot including the Grand Hotel (124 years old) before heading back to the mainland.
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| Our Mackinac Island Transportation |
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| Arch Rock on Mackinac Island |
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| Three HP when we encountered more hills |
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| Transportation leaving the Grand Hotel |
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| Mackinac Bridge (Opened in 1957) over the Mackinac Straits. A brief 6 week ice bridge affords snow machine connection between tthe Island and the he mainland each winter |
After Mackinac we paused again to visit new friends we met in AZ but who return home to summer in MI - The Bertossi's - and they just happen to have links to a couple of awesome golf courses so we enjoyed a round of 18 holes of golf - and got to blame Joe for the tough greens as he just happened to help build them a few years back!
Next stop - Midland Michigan
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