September 5 Mackinac Island

Sunday (continued):  From Higgins Lake we drove straight through to Mackinac City and boarded a ferry to the island. The day before, we purchased rather decent rain ponchos (at Meijer) and put them in my backpack ... just in case. Afterall, what's a little rain?

This first picture is taken as we are approaching the docks on the island. We had wanted to sit on the top deck of the ferry (out in the wind and the elements), but I admit to feeling rather relieved to be INSIDE when the rain came--plus it was super windy. Thankfully, the rain did not last long--in fact, it came and went all throughout our time on the island.

In the distance, you can just barely see Round Island Lighthouse--but I'll do a separate post (next) with other terrible pictures of this darling little light ...

Aren't the clouds amazing? And the sparkling water? And the ROCKS!!!

We walked along the shoreline to Arch Rock (on the right side of the island). When Emma and I were here three years ago, we biked around the island, and we didn't park our bikes to climb up the pathway to the top where we could see the view ... Emma was rather dis-inclined--she was already rather put out with me for stopping every second or two to snap ANOTHER picture. On THIS trip, David and I would be walking along talking but all of a sudden, David would be in the middle of a conversation and would look over and find he was talking to a perfect stranger because I had stopped to take ANOTHER picture ... this cracked us up (of course).

Since David and I were walking, I saw lots of stuff that I missed while biking three years ago. PLUS, today was a million times prettier just because of the impending rain and the beautiful gloomy skies. I love gloomy sky!

Since it was the day before Labor Day, the island was pretty crowded. We had to wait in line to snap close-up pictures of the arch. It was worth the wait. Odd though ... clearly there was a LINE to snap pictures, but a whole host of people continued to ignore the line and just walk right up and photo-bomb other people's pictures! David told several of these rather rude or blind individuals that everyone was standing in LINE to take a TURN to get a good picture or two. Hmm. Some people were embarrassed when they saw the line they had cut right in front--others ... well, they didn't seem to care one single bit. I found it amusing personally ...

I forgot how many steps we climbed to reach the summit--I just know that at 68, I am definitely OUT OF SHAPE for steps.

From the top--looking in one direction the sky looked like this ... turning the opposite direction--

... the sky looked like this!

The flowers were SO beautiful ... and of course, the boats and marinas ...

David and I really wanted to walk up to the Grand Hotel and have a look around. We both knew about the $10 fee just to get through the gate at the top of the hill to the hotel entrance. We had already gotten caught in the rain once earlier--thankfully, I had MY poncho unwrapped and I was quite nicely covered. DAVID, however, refused to get HIS poncho out of the package (because if he didn't use it, he wanted to return it and get his money back) ... I ask you--WHY on earth buy a poncho if you are not going to wear it in the rain?!?!?!?!? Sigh. We were sitting under a huge tree, the rain was pouring, and I covered David with my poncho as best as I could--however, most of it was on me!

So instead of walking in the rain all the way up to the Grand Hotel, we got a "cab", a horse-drawn carriage that was going up the hill to the hotel and we only had to pay $6/each! YAY! The carriage was full of other folk--all of them from Columbia. One of the women asked if we were staying at the hotel and we answered, "In our dreams!" 

The carriage pulled us right through the forbidden gate and up to the fancy front entrance where all of us exited and entered totally FREE! YAY! We were IN!! We could WANDER at will! So we did ... briefly, until my dear brother got a yearning for a ... wait for this ... DIET COKE. Yes. A DIET COKE. So we went in and out of little shops but did not find one single diet Coke. We walked by a table with several official looking ladies and one of them asked if she could help us. Yikes. My brother told her he was searching for a DIET COKE. She VERY politely asked us if we were guests at the hotel. David answered truthfully that we were NOT. She quite abruptly informed us that for $10 each, we could continue looking around, and then showed us the door to the front porch and ushered us out in the pouring rain. All for a DIET COKE. I'm just sayin ...

We walked around for a little while outside the hotel, looking for a way to sneak back in!

Here is David sticking his tongue out at me when I reminded him that we were getting WET ... all because of his stupid search for an even stupider DIET COKE. Gag me.

We did eventually walk around the front porch and found a little opening ... and although we never went back INSIDE, the beautiful front porch (that goes across the entire width of the hotel) was covered, had comfy chairs, and even waiters and waitresses asking if they could get guests drinks, etc. We just turned down all of their offers, because we would have had to give our room number in order to get a drink. I did manage to get a picture or two from the porch ...

I wish I could remember where we ate dinner! Pooh. We ate lunch at a pizza place--just grabbed a piece with a drink and we were good. I totally can't remember dinner ... perhaps it was at that little bar where we ordered the same exact dinner as each other and the waitress misunderstood that we wanted TWO meals and only brought ONE that we ended up splitting. It was OK (!!) because we then had room for ice cream a little later.

We did some more walking and shopping. David was looking for a cap with "Mackinac Island" on it. He did buy two very nice sweatshirts--one for himself and the other for his beautiful wife. We ate a nice ice cream treat and split a half bar of fudge somewhere along the way.

We boarded our ferry back to the car at about 7PM. Again, rain was chasing us the whole way. But this time--we were sitting on the top deck.

The sun was doing amazing things on the opposite side of the ferry from where we were sitting--so I ran over to the railings and watched the display and snapped a bunch of pictures ... meanwhile, we were RIGHT NEXT to the Round Island Light--and I MISSED the best pictures ever. You'll have to see what I ended up with by looking through the next post. Pathetic--all of them!

We got back to the marina, without getting rained on--got shuttled to our car way out in the parking lot, got our seatbelts ON and then it poured rain ... lots of it! But we were DRY. Whew.