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Saturday, September 25, 2010

Mackinac Island and more Michigan Adventures!


Michigan is seriously one of the coolest states! So much to see, eat and do. We had such a great day at Mackinac Island. The island was once the center for fur trading in the 1800s and has now become the Martha's Vineyard of the Northern Midwest. You can only get to the island by ferry or plane, and in the winter the lake freezes over so thick that the 500 some full time residents can snowmobile back to the mainland.

Here's a video about the unique aspects of Mackinac Island.



Cars are not allowed on the island and the only transportation is horse and bicycle. Here are some pictures from our great day.

The Grand Hotel, Mackinac Isl. premiere and oldest hotel

Horse drawn carriages were everywhere, as was their s**t :)

Giving a quick smooch to my best honey

The best thing we did the whole time was rent this awesome tandem bike and bike
around the whole island. 8 miles in under an hour!


People built little rock cairns all over the island coast. You can see
the bridge in the background.

We then headed down to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore which is on the Leelanau Peninsula. It was a nice place to chill for three nights. It's right near Traverse City which is a great college town where we had great food (Mackinac Brewing Co. and Cousin Jenny's pasties), a free movie at The State Theater, and did some wine tasting at a couple great wineries. Michigan specializes in growing cherries so we tried some great cherry stout, cherry wine, and cherry mead.


Just to give you some scale as to how big these dunes are. 


Close up of some vegetation on the dunes.
We are in Chicago right now and just stayed with my second cousin Linda and her husband Tom. They were such great hosts and showed us a real great time with amazing Chicago food and a unique look into the Arlington Race Track. More photos to come as we spend some time with my cousin Kelly, her husband Chris and their two boys Will and Owen.

~Cheers!

2 comments:

  1. So glad to hear you enjoyed your visit to the island!

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  2. This looks like a ton of fun. I bet it was really different not seeing any cars around and being in such a pristine place

    ReplyDelete