U. P. Trip - Fall 2010 - Day #4

We knew this was going to be a good day when we watched the sunrise turn the sky orange out over Lake Huron.  It was cooler than even we would have wished, and a bit breezy, but sunny all day and gradually warming.  This was the day when we could finally look people in the eye after saying we had been to the U.P. and say yes to the inevitable question "Did you go to Mackinac Island?"

We three, a few other tourists and two full coachloads of Japanese tour groups took the 9:30 Arnold line catamaran (since it was "pet-friendly") for the 20-odd minute ride over to the island.  There we walked - a lot!  Transportation on this non-motorized island is either by horseback, by horse-drawn vehicle, on a bicycle, or like us, on foot!  Interesting, but watch where you step when crossing a road.  Marissa pointed out the irony of anachronistic transportation having seen a cab driver texting on his cell phone while his horses plodded along!

In general we resisted being nickel and dimed by the tourist traps, but did less well with items requiring plastic to purchase, eventually returning with several large bags!  But we did make the climbing walk up to the Grand Hotel, where we oohed and aahed suitably and took lots of photos.  In due course we found a place where we could sit with Zoe and have a hot lunch in the sunshine.  We discovered that there is no 2:00PM ferry back, so the shops benefited by our being there an extra hour before returning to the mainland in a much less crowded boat.  Zoe was equally well-behaved coming back.  She had enjoyed a good walking work-out and had been a great ice-breaker with many strangers, but was finally exhausted.

Once back at the hotel we rested, did a fair bit of organizing, relaxed a while and ordered our dinner delivered.  It has been a good day.  However, the Internet connectivity here has its quirks, to say the least and picture loading to blogger is excruciatingly slow.  Flickr is also slow, but much better relatively, so for some pictures of our day follow this link...

Despite a day of negligible vehicle mileage today, since leaving Columbus the van has now logged 1225 miles.