6/25 - Dayton to Mackinaw City

Only one interesting thing happened on Thursday.  At 6:00 a.m. we were rudely awakened to a crash of breaking glass and china. Gwen had somehow managed to knock a glass, a coffee mug and Lovie's china bowl off the kitchen counter so broken pieces of all of them were flung far and wide. There's nothing like cleaning up a mess and vacuuming at that time of day, then trying (unsuccessfully) to get back to sleep.  In her defense, Gwen has never broken anything in her 5 1/2 years of traveling so she's been forgiven.  Lovie was very suspicious of her replacement bowl and just about wouldn't eat out of it.  We told her it was the new bowl or nothing so she finally managed to eat her dinner, but she's still leery of the bowl four days later. 

The rest of the day consisted of laundry and groceries plus a quick drive through the larger Area B section of Wright-Pat which we hadn't previously seen.  Much of it appeared to be WWII era so it's quite possible we saw the building my father worked in.

I-75 north of Dayton, going through storms

The drive to Birch Run, Michigan, on Friday was very stressful.....heavy traffic, very heavy rain for two hours, and terrible roads once we crossed from Ohio into Michigan. We spent the night in a very nice campground in Birch Run which is between Flint and Saginaw. Since we were just five miles south of Frankenmuth we decided to go there for dinner. (Although reviews of the restaurant looked good, the service was underwhelming and I won't be giving it a good review.)  Frankenmuth is a lovely town, nicknamed Little Bavaria.  It was settled by Germans in 1845 and is nearly 50% German today. It was built to look like a Bavarian town and its focus is on Christmas so it has lots of Christmas shops.

Yesterday's drive to Mackinaw City was much easier although the roads were still in bad shape.  Lots of road construction going on so they're trying to improve things but they've got so much to fix it will probably never get done.  The campground we're in is gigantic but arranged in a way that doesn't make it feel crowded, at least for the non-lakefront sites.  The ones along Lake Huron are very crowded but they've got the lake view so they have to endure being squeezed in.  We couldn't get one of those so have a spacious site quite a lengthy walk from the shore. 

When we arrived my phone (which we rely on for everything) started rebooting every 90 seconds. We found a Verizon store about 15 miles away in Cheboygan and were told the battery was causing the problems. They said off-brand batteries would destroy a phone within a year and I've been using an off-brand for 18 months so that may be right. The store would have had to order a new battery ($50) so there was no way to find out if the phone would work with a new one.  The phone is almost four years old so it's time to replace it anyway.  The worst thing about the timing was that I had no opportunity to do any research on phones so took what they had and crossed my fingers. So far, so good.

Here's the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse which operated from 1892 until the bridge opened in 1957.  It's just to the east of the bridge in the same complex as the visitor center and Colonial Michilimackinac.  The visitor center is built right under the south end of the bridge which is quite noisy.

Today we went to Colonial Michilimackinac  (pronounced MISH-il-a-MACK-inaw) which is the reconstructed fort and fur-trading village from the late 1600's to mid 1700's. Extensive archaeological work has been going on there for decades since there was nothing visible left from the fort. When the British decided Mackinac Island was a safer site for a fort in 1781, they dismantled the original fort and moved the buildings to the island. What they couldn't move they burned so it couldn't be used by any enemies.

Looking out the fort's gate to the Straits of Mackinac.

For those who might wonder about the difference in spelling between the town of Mackinaw City and the other sites which are spelled Mackinac......they're all pronounced Mackinaw.  The explanation I read was that the French started out spelling it Mackinac and, when the English named the town of Mackinaw City, they spelled it like it was pronounced.  This doesn't make sense, though, because all French names ending in AC are pronounced AC, not AW (as in Cadillac and Cognac). Either a linguistic mystery or whoever came up with that explanation needs to try again.

One of our lunch companions.

We ate our lunch at a picnic table overlooking the water.  It came equipped with gulls for entertainment.  This fellow was very demanding and did his best to chase off the competition.  One of the competitors pooped on my leg which was propped up on the bench.  Better my jeans-covered leg than my head.  This was a first for me.  I feel like I've been admitted to a select group which included my father who, while holding forth about an undoubtedly important subject while on the deck of a ship, was hit on the forehead by gull poop.  Nothing takes the steam out of holding forth better than being pooped on.

The Mackinac Bridge (nicknamed Mighty Mac) going over the Straits of Mackinac to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. (People from the U.P. are Yoopers, in case anyone's wondering.) Mighty Mac is the longest suspension bridge in the Western hemisphere, around five miles from shore to shore with the central suspension span at 8,614 feet. For a long time it was the longest suspension bridge in the world but there are now several longer ones, most of them in China. It was built between 1954 and 1957, finished on time and within budget. Jim's grandparents crossed the bridge the first day it was open to the public.

It was a gorgeous day and the rain in the forecast didn't materialize.  It's supposed to arrive later this evening and hang around until tomorrow night so we'll have to find indoor things to do tomorrow.