by Joe (dad)
We ventured up to the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and found Mackinaw City to be a terrific stop. "Terrific Stops" have beautiful natural features (Lake Huron and Lake Michigan come together here), something significant to see (Fort Michilimackinac) and doesn't require a lot of driving around (campground was only 4 miles from the Fort). We drove through rain most of the way from the Ann Arbor area to Mackinaw City, but the clouds cleared out by the time we arrived and set up camp. We virtually stumbled onto to Fort Michilimackinac as we went exploring after setting up the trailer, but what a terrific Fort that dates back to the 1700s! Our timing was good for the afternoon canon firing and Joseph and Michael volunteered to be part of the canon crew....they got the firing procedures down to 16 seconds! There was too much to see at the Fort in one afternoon, so we came back 3 days in a row to see the musket firing, taste the clay-oven baked bread, walk the ramparts around the fort, and inspect the ongoing archeology dig. The lighthouse is just outside the Fort and has been restored for public visits after being closed for a time. The Lighthouse exhibit also has a building dedicated to all the shipwrecks over the years through the Straits of Mackinac including a 6-foot model of the Cedarville tanker that sank just off the shore in 1965 after colliding with another ship and then trying to reach the shore before she sank...didn't quite work out and 10 people died.
We were a bit flummoxed about the different spellings we saw for Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. Both Mackinac and Mackinaw are pronounced the same way - mack-in-aw, but they are spelled differently to distinguish the Island from the city on the Lower Peninsula. Mackinac Island has been a resort/vacation get-away pretty continuously for a looong time, but Mackinaw City has come and gone once or twice since the 1700s and is now pretty good size, so the area adopted the different spellings to help people know where they were going. The Mackinac Bridge connects the Lower Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula, but you pretty much have to take a ferry (or helicopter) to reach Mackinac Island. The Bridge is a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the middle two lanes are mostly steel grates, so you can see water below! Even with lots of mosquitoes in the area, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Mackinaw...however you want to spell it!
We ventured up to the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and found Mackinaw City to be a terrific stop. "Terrific Stops" have beautiful natural features (Lake Huron and Lake Michigan come together here), something significant to see (Fort Michilimackinac) and doesn't require a lot of driving around (campground was only 4 miles from the Fort). We drove through rain most of the way from the Ann Arbor area to Mackinaw City, but the clouds cleared out by the time we arrived and set up camp. We virtually stumbled onto to Fort Michilimackinac as we went exploring after setting up the trailer, but what a terrific Fort that dates back to the 1700s! Our timing was good for the afternoon canon firing and Joseph and Michael volunteered to be part of the canon crew....they got the firing procedures down to 16 seconds! There was too much to see at the Fort in one afternoon, so we came back 3 days in a row to see the musket firing, taste the clay-oven baked bread, walk the ramparts around the fort, and inspect the ongoing archeology dig. The lighthouse is just outside the Fort and has been restored for public visits after being closed for a time. The Lighthouse exhibit also has a building dedicated to all the shipwrecks over the years through the Straits of Mackinac including a 6-foot model of the Cedarville tanker that sank just off the shore in 1965 after colliding with another ship and then trying to reach the shore before she sank...didn't quite work out and 10 people died.
We were a bit flummoxed about the different spellings we saw for Mackinaw City and Mackinac Island. Both Mackinac and Mackinaw are pronounced the same way - mack-in-aw, but they are spelled differently to distinguish the Island from the city on the Lower Peninsula. Mackinac Island has been a resort/vacation get-away pretty continuously for a looong time, but Mackinaw City has come and gone once or twice since the 1700s and is now pretty good size, so the area adopted the different spellings to help people know where they were going. The Mackinac Bridge connects the Lower Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula, but you pretty much have to take a ferry (or helicopter) to reach Mackinac Island. The Bridge is a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the middle two lanes are mostly steel grates, so you can see water below! Even with lots of mosquitoes in the area, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Mackinaw...however you want to spell it!