Sunday, July 10, 2011

Mackinac Island 2011

Every year we like to go to the Straits State Park in St Ignace MI. From there we take the ferry over to Mackinac Island. We've also made a tradition of leaving this creature of comfort home and travel light with our little pup tent.



Crazy I know, but we like to rough it to be reminded of how good we have it. And believe me... we have it good. Our first challenge was finding our air mattress... the first year we did this with little rubber mats and that was a big mistake. Don't know who we loaned our nice air mattress to, but I hope they remember it's ours and return it lol. We had to take our old one and it loses air. It was fine for one night and then we pumped it up again for the second night. Yup, we had to pack our bikes in the car too. It was packed.



The campground is at the base of the bridge. That solid looking thing at the bottom right is tarps and stuff... they work on this bridge every year and it appears to be in great shape.


Can you see the size of this barge going under the bridge? And it fits under the bridge! The bridge is 5 miles long. Every year on Labor Day they close half the bridge to car traffic and open it to foot traffic. We've hiked it a couple of times. Nice tradition, but we kind of steer clear of crowds these days.





We woke up Saturday morning and took the ferry across. We get out of town pretty quick because it is packed with tourists. Once out of town the 8 mile path around the island is very easy to manuever. We stopped here at Mission Pointe to relax for a minute and enjoy the view. They were setting up a wedding at the gazebo and the men in their white formal wear were waiting around for quite a while.





If sitting watching sailboats isn't relaxing I don't know what is.


We spotted a lot on inukshuk around the island this year. We first learned what they were on our trip to Alaska. They are stone figures to signify someone was here before or you are on the right path. This one behind us was very tall.





The fort is still there lol. We like to rest on the lawn out front after our 8 mile trek around the island. You have to be ready when the cannon fires or it might wake you up :)



A cute little light house on our was back to St Ignace.

There were lot of wild flowers all around the island. Of course the formal gardens are always lovely, but I enjoy the beauty of nature when you find it unexpectedly.


Found this in my pictures. It's my new garden art. Our daughter in law brought over a bottle of this a while back and I liked the bottle. Didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I just kept it simple and stuck it in the ground. Beautiful peaceful blue and the message is perfect... RELAX. I'm thinking I need more garden art :) Yup, the deer ate our hostas again this year.. frustrating... relax!




2 comments:

The Adventures of Grunty and Chubbs said...

Sounds like a great trip! And I love your recycled art!

Tammy said...

I haven't been that far up north in years. Your trip and reading about it makes me want to go.