R and J in the USA

We woke up the morning of the August 7th and made our way to our next Michigan stop, Mackinaw City. Mackinaw City is located at the very tip of Michigan’s lower peninsula, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.

We found a great spot to boondock overnight (that means parking outside of a campground with no amenities) at a town lot that didn’t have any “no overnight camping” signs. It was right next to the bike path and had a lovely and clean bathroom facility right there. As we were settling down for the night, a lovely couple that had just biked forty miles on the bike path was loading up their bikes. We had a great conversation with them (the one where Julie learned what swimmer’s itch is!) that you can read more about in our People Along the Way section.

In the morning, we moved the van over to one of the ferry parking lots, grabbed our bikes, and rode to the ferry dock. Our destination for the morning was Mackinac Island (spelled in its original form, but pronounced like Mackinaw), a small car-less island in Lake Huron. After a windy ferry ride, we arrived at this town frozen in time.

The streets were filled with throngs of bikes and horse-drawn carriages. The smell of horse manure was a light and ever-present undercurrent to every breathe. Restaurants, tourist shops, and bike rentals lined the bustling streets. There were more fudge shoppes than you could possibly patronize. The architecture boasted a callback to another time.

We stopped for lunch at yet another delicious Mexican restaurant overlooking the stunningly blue waters of Lake Huron. (Come on Lake Ontario, let’s get you cleaned up!) After a delicious meal, we headed out to see the sites of Mackinac Island.

We started with a little walking tour past Fort Mackinac and through some of the walking paths before we hopped on our bikes and rode the path around the island’s perimeter. The path was filled with other walkers and bikers taking in a beautiful sunny day free from the smells of exhaust fumes, the sounds of revving or honking, and whatever that feeling is that exists when cars are gathered.

Julie was refreshed and pumped and put her rotating pedals to the proverbial metal, signaling Ryan he’d need to work to keep up. There is nothing like letting loose on a bike. Though Julie was significantly out of biking shape, we had long become certain of our decision to invest in a great bike rack that allowed us to have our bikes with us to grab small biking opportunities like this one. The wind, the water, the scenery, the bike paths, the feel of it all together – just fantastic.

We loved our short time in this carless village. Given the fact that we actually turned our van into a house, we are clearly no enemy of motorized vehicles. Still, it was nice to be in a world without them for a morning. Julie kept imagining how much she thought her parents would really enjoy a visit to Mackinac Island. Before long it was time to hop the ferry back to the mainland. We had a three-hour drive in front of us to hit our next and final stop on our Michigan tour.

We began our drive by traversing the Mackinac Bridge, a five-mile-long suspension bridge that spans the Straits of Mackinac and connects Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. Upon landing in the upper peninsula we made a quick stop at a small park so Julie could put her feet in Lake Huron. She quite loves checking things off lists. Once she got her feet in the also crystal clear waters of Lake Huron, she could now, or at least, very soon say she had been in all of the Great Lakes. With Lake Huron checked off that list, we drove up north to visit Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on the shores of the greatest Great Lake of them all, Lake Superior.