St Ignace, MI - Mackinac Island 07/13 - 07/15

Monday morning we shifted locations from the Pictured Rocks area to the next item on our list: Mackinac Island.



We checked into the Castle Rock Lakefront Campground in the town of St. Ignace, MI (still in the Upper Peninsula) and right on the beach of Lake Huron.  The water was maybe 30 ft from the front of our camper.













Day 1 was a bit of a catch up day for laundry and picking up our shipment of mail from Phoenix.
We spent the day in town and John had his first Pastie - a northern Wisconsin and Michigan favorite.  Pronounced Past-tee, it's like a self contained beef or chicken pot pie and is actually pretty good.

 Day two we woke to this view out the bedroom window - nice!

We were out early to catch the ferry to famous Mackinac Island.  This one took a detour first under the Mackinac Bridge into Lake Michigan and then back into Lake Huron - kind of a gimmic I suppose but fun to have done it.

There are no cars allowed on the island so we did a whole lot of walking.  Otherwise it's horses or bicycles.

First stop was the fabled Grand Hotel.  You have to pay just to visit but it's an all day pass once you do (and we did ...)

The front deck is mighty fine.  We did ice cream here later in the day after lots of walking.

There are some very nice quiet paths in the middle of the island and we enjoyed the hiking.

Lunch was on the deck of old Fort Mackinac overlooking the harbor.  A number of the boats from the just completed Chicago to Mackinac sailing race were still in the area.

In general, the horse drawn carriages are pretty spiffy.  And yes there's a good deal of employment on the island cleaning up after them.