Mackinac Island

Yesterday we spent the whole day on Mackinac Island, where the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan meet near the junction of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It's a popular holiday spot, particularly in the summer, and the only way to get to the island is by ferry. (Well, there is a small airport, but I think it's for private planes and we are not those people.) Cars are prohibited, so everyone on the island travels by foot, on a bicycle or by horse-drawn wagon. It all feels very Gilded Age.

The hotel in the photo above is where my in-laws spent their honeymoon. Yesterday was their 60th wedding anniversary, so they posed on the steps for a commemorative photo. You can see them raising their hands in victory beyond all the two-wheeled traffic in the street.

We aren't staying on Mackinac, though -- we're in nearby Mackinaw City. We took the ferry over for the day. (And by the way, even though Mackinac ends in a C, it's also pronounced "Mackinaw," just like the town on the mainland. Apparently the city elders there simply decided to adopt a more phonetic spelling. It's very touristy to pronounce "Mackinac" like it rhymes with "heart attack.")

The island is dominated by the Grand Hotel, seen here from the ferry on Lake Huron. It supposedly has the world's longest front porch. We didn't actually go there. Apparently it's crazy expensive and I was fine seeing it from a distance.

As I said, everything on the island is done by horse-drawn carriage. I saw a horse-drawn rubbish cart, and even the Amazon packages come by equine special delivery!

We walked up and down the main street, popping into little shops and stopping at a restaurant called Millie's (named, apparently, for a dog) for lunch. We had a drink at the Iroquois (top photo) which has a beautiful back patio and dock overlooking the water. I had a variation on a Moscow mule -- vodka, ginger beer and lime.

Then we took a horse-drawn carriage tour, which took us off the main drag and into the forested interior of the island. Apparently it's all a state park. The horses for the first leg of our journey were named Merle and Lady, and although I failed to look at Merle's much-touted mustache I could hear Lady's unladylike legendary flatulence. It was like an episode of Seinfeld.

We eventually wound up at a popular scenic spot called Arch Rock. I don't know anything about the geology of this beyond the guide saying it was caused by erosion. But it was pretty impressive. That's a coastal road way down at the bottom, with Lake Huron in the background.

The carriage dropped us at the top of a steep and winding (but scenic!) path near the Michigan governor's summer home. From here we had a nice view as we walked the short distance down into town.

We had dinner at Mary's Bistro Draught House before catching the second-to-last ferry back to the mainland.

And that's when I got my best view of the famous Mackinac Bridge, connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. We're supposed to travel over that bridge today. Stay tuned!