Touring Mackinaw City

We actually slept in this morning and didn't leave until around noon today, heading to the downtown Mackinaw City area. The first place we went was to the Old Mackinaw Lighthouse. We'd never toured a lighthouse before and I really enjoyed it. We toured the old lighthouse keeper's rooms, which included a living area, kitchen, bedroom and small dining area, including period pieces of how the lighthouse was furnished. We walked up to the top of the lighthouse, it was something like 72 steps, and obviously no overweight or larger folks must have ever lived in the lighthouse! I suspect anyone over 200 pounds would have a difficult time climbing the circular stairs and once to the top, the actual stairs to the lighthouse. Whew! But the view was worth it. Awesome.

We continued down the path to the Old Mackinaw Fort, which consists of 10 or so buildings. The primary purpose of this fort was for the fur trade. The French and Indians exchanged goods for furs beginning in the early 1700's. There were also several reenactments while we were there, including firing of one of the canons and the weekly trade and barter that occurred between the indians and french. All of the buildings in this fort were actually recreated as it was torn down by the British during the American Revolution and moved to Mackinac 'Island', where they felt much safer from Americans.

Afterwards, we headed to a local restaurant and Mark had the walleye fish platter and I had shrimp. We topped it off by sharing a piece of homemade bannana cream pie. Yum!! We got back home around 5:00 and called it a day. Our plans are to head to Mackinac Island tomorrow morning. We'll catch a ferry for a 30 minute boat ride across Lake Huron to Mackinac Island.

I've wanted to see Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel ever since I first saw the movie 'Somewhere in Time', starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. I still have that movie. There's lot's of things to see on the island and we're thinking about renting bicycles to check it out, as no cars are allowed on the island...only horses, horse drawn carriages and bicycles. So, we're really looking forward to our journey tomorrow.

We had a terrific day today and hope you did as well. Until later~