A Grand Adventure

It was a bridge that initially attracted our attention to the area. 

Brombeere heard about this bridge that connected the Michigan Upper Peninsula to the rest of the state and said she wanted to see it some day. So we began learning more about the area and planning what it would take to get there.  We had actually planned to take this trip last fall but something came up and it got postponed. But finally the day came!  We packed up our car, loaded it all up with the stuff we wanted to take.

Then we were ready to get on our way for a couple of days in the "UP"!

We had discovered a fairly popular island near the bridge and learned that motor vehicles were not allowed on the island so we took our bikes and planned to see the island by bike.  Mackinac Island was the name of this popular island.  

We drove and drove and drove until we got to St Ignace where we had decided to stay while we played in the area.  Then the next morning we got up and drove to the ferry that would take us out to the island. 

It was only a short trip out to the island, about 20 minutes, with a brief side trip under the bridge that had first attracted us to the area.

Pretty soon we were pulling into the main harbor at Mackinac Island, ready for our adventure to begin.

Our plan was to ride around the perimeter of the island, a trip of just over eight miles.  There's a nice paved road all the way around, right at the water's edge. But first we had to get out of the little town that surrounds the harbor area.

It was an interesting little village, no motor vehicles are allowed on the island (with just a couple of exceptions for emergency vehicles) so there were a lot of horse drawn vehicles, such as taxis and other  carriages, and lots and lots of bicycles.  If you were brave, you could even  rent individual horses to tour the area on. You can rent bikes or bring your own.  We had opted to bring our own.  Our plan was the ride around the island and then look around town.  

So off we went! We had done some research about what there was to see on the island.  One thing Brombeere wanted to see was a natural feature called "Arch Rock".  That was the first stop our our way.

We had known the arch was a little ways off the path.  What we hadn't fully comprehended was that the short trail to the arch was all up hill, a climb so steep it was all stairs.

So, yeah, we took the stairs up to the arch.

The sign at the bottom said there were 207 steps to the top but to get to the highest view point there were actually a few more.  The total actually came to 225.  And we made it!

It was a spectacular view, worth the climb.

After we got back down and had continued our ride a short way we were able to see the arch from the road. 

We continued  on around the island, stopping where something caught our interest, playing in the water, having a good time as we went. Normally I "map" my rides to keep track of them but this time I didn't; we just rode, not in any particular hurry, just enjoying the journey.  It was a remarkably clear day and very pretty in any direction you looked.

Pretty soon we were  coming back into town and began meeting more people, not that there hadn't been plenty of other people on the trail around the island.  But there definitely were more people in town.  We decided to first ride up to The Grand Hotel, a famous and very high class hotel on the island. 

Even their carriage was a cut above the rest of the "shuttles" for any of the other, nicer places you could stay; matching greys, liveried driver, fully enclosed carriage, the whole nine yards.

The island rises over 900 feet to the highest point but the hotel wasn't at the top; we decided to give it a try.  At first it wasn't so bad but coming up the final approach to the hotel it got a bit steeper, that plus all the other traffic around the hotel made it a pretty complicated ride.  This was, after all, a major stop on all the sight-seeing tours on the island.

It's a big, impressive hotel.

It would have been fun to stay there but it was a little much for our taste.  So we finished our "look-see" and then headed back down the hill for some lunch.

We had decided that for meals we weren't going to go to any chain restaurants, we were going to take a chance on the local places.  That can be a bit risky but we lucked out, all the food we had was excellent.

We had lunch on the island at a place called the Seabiscuit Café, it was real good. Then we went a couple of doors down the street to a fudge place.  There were a lot of fudge places to choose from.  We  picked this one because it had a lot of people going in; we figured if it was attracting that many people it must be good.

They were making fudge right there in the shop, that was pretty cool to watch.  We picked a bunch of fudge and some peanut brittle.  Then we hit a few shops for souvenirs.  

Then it was time to get on the ferry and head back to the mainland.  It had been a really fun day on the island, well worth the trip.  The top deck had been full on our way to the island but coming back there was plenty of room so we rode on top.  That was fun.

We got desert back in St Ignace, at a local ice cream shop, of course.  Then we spent a little time looking around the marina and enjoying the view.

Then we wanted to head across the bridge that brought us here, the Mackinac Bridge.

This was a big suspension bridge, almost five miles long, built in the 10950's.  For a long time it was the longest suspension bridge in the United States.  It's still the fourth longest. At its highest point, the bridge is 200 feet above the water, enough for any of the ships that might want to go under it.  It is the official dividing point between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.  It is designed to have 35' of sway, which would accommodate some pretty severe weather.  We didn't feel any of that, which was a happy thing.

We found a little park right by the bridge so we could take a better look.

Brombeere also wanted to dip her toes in the water so she could add Lake Huron to her collection of the Great Lakes she's played in.  The water in any of the Great Lakes is always pretty cold so just dipping her toes was enough for her.

There was a cute little lighthouse there in the park, too, so that was an added bonus, the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse.  If we had gotten there sooner in the day we could have taken a tour, including hiking up to the top, but we were too late in the day for that.  So we just found a park bench, listened to the waves, and watched the birds for a while. 

After a while we we went back to St Ignace and checked out the marina ...

... and the Wawatam Lighthouse ... 

... and watched the sun set.  A very quiet way to end the day. Then it was time to head back to the hotel and call it a day.  And it had been a very good day.

The next day the plan was to head for Canada, only fifty miles to the north.  

We had brought our passports and got in with no problems.  Google Maps kept saying there was a covid check-point at the border but that turned out not to be the case, no covid check.  We got right into Sault Ste Marie with no problem at all.  

Something we noticed right away, once we got into Canada, was that the GPS began giving distances in metrics.  Miles were gone, now it was all kilometers and meters.  That was weird. interesting but a little weird.

Since we had our bikes with us we were planning on going for a ride in Canada; we picked a nature reserve called the Fort Creek Conservation Area, right there in Sault Ste Marie.  I had studied it out as much as I could on the Internet and figured a ride on the stretch shown in black on the sign below would be a good ride,  It wasn't as long as we normally go, out and back would only be about three miles, but there are a lot of hills in this conservation area and I wanted to avoid them as much as possible.  This route would involve some hills but, as near as I could tell, it would be generally uphill going out and down hill coming back.  We've done that before, it's not so bad.  Besides, the main point here was to be able to say we'd ridden our bikes in Canada.

We found our way to the parking lot where we wanted to start but when we got the bikes out of the car and were getting set up and ready, Brombeere noticed her chain was not right, it was all twisted and stuck; it wouldn't move at all. I can do minor bike repairs and I have a biking tool I keep with us on rides so I can handle some repairs so I took a look.  I'm not sure how it happened, but the chain had gotten all twisted around the front derailleur. With both of working on it, and getting a bit dirty in the process, we managed to work the chain back to where it belonged. It didn't appear anything was broken, just a twisted chain. Brombeere took a slow spin around the parking lot to get the chain and derailleur back in proper alignment and then we were ready to go.

This section of trail is part of what they call the John Roswell Hub Trail, a 25.5 mile recreational trail around Sault Ste Marie that connects several points of interest, it's closed to motorized vehicles.  It goes through a number of parks, the Fort Creek Conservation Area being the largest.  Most of the trail is a designated route along city streets.

We got started and noticed right away that it looked like we were going uphill, not steep, but uphill nonetheless.  This was disconcerting because, when you're going a route you plan on coming back on, and you feel like you're going downhill, it's hard to think of anything other than how much work it's going to be to come back and have to go uphill all the way.  That's distracting.  But we pushed ahead.  After a while, though, I noticed that even though it looked like we were going down hill, we were not coasting, we had to keep pedaling all the time to keep moving; it wasn't making sense. 

A mile and a half is not very far on a bike and pretty soon we reached the turn-around point.  I was glad for it, too, because we were at the top of a pretty big hill.  If we had gone any farther it would have been a lot of work to get back up that hill.  So we turned around and headed back, with a bit of dreading of the climb we thought we'd be making all the way back.  But we were pleasantly surprised, even though it had looked like we'd been going downhill all the way it had been an optical illusion. I've known of a couple of places over the years that have been called "gravity hill"; they looked like inclines but in a car you actually roll "up" them.  Apparently this was another one. It was down hill all the way back, with a couple of exceptions that we made it up with no trouble at all. Even the one hill that had felt like it was going to be a lot of work was no trouble at all, we had a good run and made it up just fine.

Suddenly we were back and it hadn't been hard at all.

It actually had been a very nice, albeit short ride.  Made me wish we had been able to find a longer ride. But still it was a very pleasant ride through some very beautiful scenery.

Brombeere didn't want to go back yet so we drove around, seeing what Sault Ste Marie had to offer.  We went to their tourism office and got some information about the city.  Then we went and got some lunch, we found another good place to eat.  We found a couple of quilting stores and a little museum that was actually quite interesting; it had an antique snowmobile and a scale model of the Edmund Fitzgerald with a time line of its final journey. We learned that the Sault Ste Marie area has been influenced by Indian, French, and British settlers to become what it is today.  We had the whole   museum all to ourselves, an interesting place.  We stayed until it closed.

From the museum we went and got some ice cream (naturally) and then called it a day. 

We headed back to the good, ole USofA, the motel, and the All American Moose that had greeted us or sent us off each time we left or returned to the motel.

The next morning we started back for home. But there were a few more stops we wanted to make. One thing that has been on Brombeere's bucket list for a while and here, near St Ignace, was an opportunity for her to do it: a Zip Line. We pull in, got her all set up, and she made the climb up the tower to start.

It took a few minutes to hike up to the tower. She said it took a little courage to step off, but when she was done she said it was great and she'd do it again in a heartbeat. They actually had two zip lines that she did, one that was 700 feet and a second that was 400 feet, lots of fun.

Our last stops were at another quilting store and for lunch on the way back.

This was a good vacation, some fun days well spent. Over the years we have not done very many vacations like this.  We decided when we were done that we would need to do this again.

So now all that is left is the souvenirs we brought back and our happy memories.  It was a good time, a very good time.