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 1950'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 downhill, not steep, but downhill 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.

In a Two Horse Open Sleigh!

My grandparents, my Dad's parents, were ranchers.  They had a house in town and a large ranch a ways out of town. Over the years, they raised cattle (both dairy and beef) and sheep.  The house in town was on several acres so they sometimes had sheep there, as well as hogs. The sheep that came to the house in town were usually bum lambs that had to be hand fed. Back before my grandfather bought his first tractor, horses provided the power to pull the wagons and other equipment as needed. Once he bought his tractors, he kept the horses for several years. When I was a child they would sometimes hook up the horses to the wagons and take whoever was there visiting for wagon rides around the countryside.  It was particularly fun in the winter.  He had a wagon on sleigh runners; we would throw a bunch of haybales on to sit on, bring a bunch of warm blankets to wrap up in and stay warm, and then ride around the backroads all over the county.  It was a lot of fun, fond memories.

A while back, Brombeere learned of an outfit, a farm here in the state, that ran a side business of providing sleigh rides to whoever wanted to go. So we made a reservation and went with Himbeere and his friend.  It was a lot of fun.

We got there a little early.  When that happens they invite you to visit the barn and see the horses that are  not currently out pulling wagons. So we did.

After a while the wagon we were going to ride on got back from the ride that had gone out earlier in the day.  They typically had two wagons out at any given time, depending on how many groups were coming on that day.  So we got to see the horses and wagon we would be riding on.  

The wagon unloaded and then pulled into the barn so they could care for the horses, give them a rest and drink, check them out and make sure they were okay to go out again on the next ride.  That also gave them a chance to check the wagon and make sure it was also okay to go out again.  Then, after several minutes, they let everyone get in the wagon and they headed out.  

After a short trip across an open field, we entered some woods, where the rest of the ride would be.  The lady driving the wagon was very friendly, very helpful; she even offered to take a few pictures so we could have our whole group in a couple of shots.

They had a system of trails all around through the woods. It was very quiet, a very peaceful ride.

The wagon was quite comfortable, considering it was a wagon.

We had come prepared with warm coats and blankets for the ladies.  It was actually a very nice day for the ride.  In the woods there was pretty much no wind and it wasn't a really cold day anyway.  We had actually been a little worried that there might not be enough snow a few days leading up to the ride.

But it had snowed there at the farm a couple of days before we were there and the trails were in great shape.  It was a good ride.

Part way through the ride we stopped at a fire pit they had out in the trees.  If we'd wanted to, we could have brought some food and had a cook out over the fire.  

But we still stopped at the fire pit and just sat and visited there in the woods. 

Even though we had elected not to cook anything, the lady still built up the fire.  They kept it going all day so that any group that wanted to could enjoy it.  We had decided before hand to go into town after the ride and eat at one of the restaurants in town.

It also gave the horses the opportunity to take a rest.

They had a nice set up there in the woods.  We decided this would be a fun thing to do again and, next time we would definitely bring some lunch to cook over the fire, even if it was just marshmallows to roast.  It would be fun.  Especially since they provide the fire and all the stuff needed to cook and all we would need to bring was the food.

It was a very fun way to spend the afternoon.  The whole ride, including the stop at the fire pit, took almost an hour.  Nobody froze, nobody fell out of the wagon, and nobody got bit by a horse.  It was a very fun time.  We left definitely wanting to do it again.

An Afternoon Drive

It had been a while so we decided the other day we wanted to go for a drive.  I keep a list of interesting places around the state that I would some day like to visit. It's the closest thing I have to a "bucket list", I suppose.  Anyway, Brombeere said she didn't have any place in particular in mind, she just wanted to go for an afternoon drive so I picked a place and that's where we went. Actually, where I began, when picking the place, was picking one of the many "rustic roads" our state has designated.  I wanted to go to a new one, one I hadn't been to before.  And I wanted it to be along one.  To earn the designation Rustic Road, a road has to be at least two miles long, among other things.  I wanted one longer than that so I looked at the map and picked one that was long.  It just happened to also be in a state park I have had on my list for a while; two birds with one stone!

The road began at the top of the Black River State Forest and is 12 miles long.

This winter in our state there's been a lot of snow.  Unfortunately, it's usually been followed each time by warmer weather.  So we'd get a really nice, heavy snow fall.  It would stay cold for a week or so and then it would get warm, which would cause a lot of the snow to melt.

As we drove along the road you could see the effects of the heavy snow.  Not only would there be a lot, but it would also be heavier than normal, a little wetter than normal.  That makes good packing snow,  good snowman snow, good snowball snow.  But it can also be hard on trees and shrubbery.

So we saw lots of bent-over trees, lots of broken limbs.  A hard winter, some might call it.

But it was still a pretty drive.  It was an overcast day, it might have been prettier if the sun had been out, shinning bright in the winter sky.  But it was still a very pretty drive.  This forest was in what is referred to as the "driftless area", the leading edge of the ancient glacier that used to cover most of the state.  So in front of the glacier a lot of dirt got pushed around, resulting in today's hills found all over in the southwest part of the state.  It's a very pretty area.

We did find one parking area that had been plowed out, the parking area for the trailhead of a number of trails through the forest, used for hiking and cross country skiing in the winter.  So we stopped to look around.

We might have tried a picnic, there were, after all, some picnic tables, and we found a nearby water pump.

But the snow was a bit deep and the pump turned off, if not frozen.  So we decided to pass on the picnic.

Some of the small stream and ponds were frozen over.  Others were not; very picturesque.

Eventually we came to the end of the officially designated rustic road so we turned around and drove back along the road and through the forest.  It was a very nice drive, a good time together. The whole time we had only seen four or five other cars, we'd nearly had the park to ourselves.  We enjoyed the time very much.  It also left us feeling like we needed to come back when it was warmer; have that picnic, or maybe even go camping for a day or two.  Maybe even bring the bikes back and try one or two of the trails that were all covered with snow this time.  That could be a fun time.  But today, it was a good drive, that was all we were looking for.  But it was everything we were looking for.

Comfortable Accessories

The youngest of my eight children is nearing thirty year old. Years ago, when most of my children were learning to drive, we lived in a rural community.  That meant driving a lot of country roads.  Where we worked, where we shopped, where we went to church, they were all 25-30 miles away.  Even where the kids went to school was seven miles away, all mostly on country roads.  And country roads mean more deer.  Yes, we were unable to avoid deer incidents, incidents which occasionally required the services of a collision repair shop. Between that and my children learning to drive, we had our cars in the shop to repair dents and crumpled fenders on several occasions.  We always went to the same shop and always, they would give us a complimentary key ring ornament, which, of course, had the logo of their national affiliation it.  Good advertising, I guess.  Anyway, I saved them and, as one would wear out and break, I would replace it with another. However, we eventually moved into a larger town so our shopping, working, and church going didn't involve so may miles of country roads.  The  kids all got better at driving and we didn't end up at the repair shop near as often; my supply of key tags began to dwindle. But for years I had one of those tags hanging on my key ring.  Well, these many years later, what I thought was the last one finally broke,

It made me sad. I had one of these tags hanging on my key ring for so long I wasn't sure I could recognize the keys as mine without the tag.  Yet there it was, broken.

I spent a few days doing without and then decided to look in my jewelry box, where I had kept all these tags for all these years, just in case there might be one more.

Guess what I found!  Callooh! Callay! One more tag!  Yes, there was another, one more!  Of course, I put it on right away and all was right with the world again.  My pocket felt normal again.  It was a good day.

Sewing with Grandkids

Bombeere has always enjoyed sewing and most recently has had fun sewing non-clothing items, stuff like quilts, table runners, pillows, and other things that are not clothes.  When I first met her she sewed mostly clothes. In fact, I still have the first shirt she ever sewed for me. But, over the years, she has branched out into other stuff. When there's time, much of her Christmas giving consists of things she's sewn. 

In recent years, as grandkids have seen her sewing, or received things she has sewn for them as gifts, some of them have expressed an interest in learning to sew, much to the delight of their grandmother.  She has only too happy to spend time with them helping them sew something of their choice.  So she's helped one sew doll clothes.  Another time she helped one of the other girls make a toy she then gave to her brother, a "Blobby".  There have been other sewing lessons, each time she lets the student pick the project and colors.  She helps them pick the fabric for whatever project they select.  Sometimes it means a trip to the store to pick the fabric, other times the fabric comes from her own stash or their mother's stash.  In any case, it's always fun to spend the time sewing and learning.  It also provides time to talk, which in my own opinion, is one of the better benefits of the projects.

One wanted to do a small blanket.

A little later she wanted to make a matching zipper pouch.  Those both turned out well.

Another time, with one of the other kids, there was a pillow.

The pillow turned out quite well, she entered it in the county fair and got a ribbon for it.  It was fun.

The creator of the blob did a different project another time.   

This time she made a snake.  This one likes to think outside the box.  The snake was her own design.  Like the blob, she described what she wanted to her grandmother and then the two of them made it happen.  She was quite pleased with the results.

This one saw his sister having so much fun and wanted to get in on it.  He also did a pouch.

His design was a little different from his sisters' but it turned out quite well.  He has since done a number of other sewing projects with his mother.

Even a younger granddaughter wanted to get in on it.  She needed a little more help than the older girls but she was still very pleased with the blankie she made for her doll.

I was surprised that this one wanted to sew.  This kid is so active and lively, he's usually moving.  I was surprised that he wanted to do something that required sitting still long enough to put something together.  Like the others, Grandma let him pick his colors and design.  He made his choice from Grandma's stash; his basic design was Pokémon. He showed amazing concentration as he sewed the pillow top together.  It was a big enough project that it took two sessions of sewing.

But he stuck with it and ended up with a very nice pillow.  He was quite pleased with it.

Each time, the grandchild ends up with a nice something of their own choosing, something that they designed and made with their grandmothers, and some one-on-one time with their grandmothers.  I personally see a lot of value in that; both the grandchild and the grandmother enjoy it. Some happy memories.  That's worth a lot.