(it’s pronounced mackinaw, fyi, in case you’re going to be chatting about it with anybody).
i love mackinac island!
in my last post about our trip up north, i said that we left at 6:30 in the morning on Tuesday, Sept. 20th, to drive from Starved Rock to Mackinac Island.
i didn’t mention that when i got up much much earlier than i ever get up, i went to put on my glasses…and the side piece had broken right off. uh oh.
kevin had brought backup glasses, but i don’t have any decent backup glasses, that have bifocals.
luckily kevin also brought an emergency kit with some nice tape in it. he neatly taped the side piece onto my glasses and i gingerly wore them for the res of the trip, definitely looking like a big geek, at least from the side, with the white tape wrapped around my frames.
Here’s me, looking very glamorous, riding in the car very early in the morning. at least i wore the earrings that i wore for our wedding!
it was really foggy as we set out.
and we drove, and drove, and drove some more. we didn’t want to get anywhere near chicago, so we went up through wisconsin, and finally reached the shores of michigan. so beautiful!
we thought we’d take the 6:00 ferry over to the island, but somehow we got to St. Ignace, where we were to board the ferry, at about 4:50. the woman selling tickets said we could make the 5:00 ferry, so we had ten hysterical fast-motion minutes of running all around getting tickets and paying too much extra for getting the valet parking and scrambling around to get our bags out of the van…
we sat outside on the upper deck of the ferry even though it was a bit chilly, and we realized that my new raincoat hadn’t made it onto the boat with us. but it was beautiful and look at the bridge, i reminds me of san francisco…
the grand hotel! it was fantastic to see it from the water. kevin had been to mackinac two other times, but i’d never been, and it was just fascinating.
our hotel is the bright yellow one, the Windermere Hotel, and i knew that was it because of the brightness of the yellow.
when we got to the island, after such a short ferry ride, a guy from the hotel was there to take our bags. he hopped on his bike, and we walked to our hotel…literally across the street from the dock. ok, not across the street literally maybe, but it was maybe a two minute walk from the dock to the hotel. very ridiculous that the guy carried our bags on his bike, but it was ok. but then we had to carry them ourselves up to our room on the third floor…
our room was terrific, very roomy, with nice big windows.
here’s the beautiful garden down below! such a nice place, and they had a big front porch with rocking chairs. i think that one of the things the grand hotel is known for is their huge porch with rocking chairs, but this porch was plenty big, and sometimes there were even a couple of empty chairs to sit in. why didn’t i take a picture of it? but here’s the lovely garden.
and the view from one of our windows!
i can’t figure out what kevin is studying here, but it looks important to me.
we almost immediately went out to find some dinner, and this is the side of our hotel, and our room is up there on the top somewhere.
we had dinner at a place called the mustang lounge, purportedly the oldest bar on the island, and we did get to sit outside, and i have a perfectly fine quesadilla, but kevin got one of the worst reubens he’s ever tried. so that was disappointing.
after dinner we strolled all around, and i loved being able to walk right down the street, no cars anywhere…did i mention that there are no cars on the island? horses, horse-drawn cariages, and that’s it. well, they were doing some road work, so there might have been a couple of road repair vehicles, but mostly just bikes and horses.
and i bet it’s kind of crazy there in the summertime, but because it was september, it wasn’t so crowded and here we are on one street up from the main street. gee, nobody here at all.
this is another lovely hotel; there were many of them around, but i loved that ours was at the very end of the main street, a little bit away from the many many shops and restaurants and other hotels, plus we could sit on the porch and look out at the water and the horses going by.
we walked all the way up to the grand hotel, and this is their lavish front lawn. we didn’t go inside because they charge $10 a person to even enter the lobby. i’m sure this is because they must have gotten swamped with tourists all the time. but the grounds were free.
here’s a closeup of a horse-drawn carriage made of shrubbery. cool.
we did quite a bit of walking that first night on the island, but it was nothing compared to the walking we did the next couple of days.
lovely lovely lovely, i want to go back soon.
ok then,
mrs. i can’t believe it’s october and life is much too busy right now hughes.