Is it Mackinaw or Mackinac?

Which ever it is, we were there on Friday. Since we're not able to take a long vacation this year, we're splitting the time up into mini-vacations. This was our first one. It started at 4:30 a.m. when Ed and I got up to get everything packed up. 5:45 a.m. we were on the road. We got to the dock at 10:30 and caught the Arnold over to the island. Sam loved the boat ride. Alina didn't quite have her sea legs and was wobbly, but laughed the whole time. We got off the boat and on our bikes.

We stopped half way around to eat lunch and throw stones into Lake Huron (it just amazes me that one side of the bridge is Lake Huron and the other side is Lake Michigan. Guess they had to divide it somewhere). 8 miles later, we got back into town. Sam rode his bike around the entire island. Not one complaint out of his mouth. He peddaled his little legs SO fast the entire time.

While in town, we walked down main street, splurged on some icecream (Mackinac Island Fudge for me..Superman for Sam, Cookie Dough for Ed, and Alina had the community spoon and sampled all of ours). We continued on our walk up another street and then back to our bikes. We decided to venture into the island some and went and saw skull cave and then took a short cut to get back into town. We came out the other end of the shortcut into a neighborhood. It looked like a normal, city neighborhood with street lights and telephone wires and toys in the yards and kids playing in the street. NOTHING like main street and the huge bed and breakfasts and inns that you usually see when going there. It was a dose of reality. We headed back into town via main street and going by the Grand Hotel. Did you know that if you don't have reservations there, you have to pay $12 a person if you want to enter the hotel. And after 5 you have to wear a suit coat and dress pants on the premises. So I took pictures instead of going in and seeing it. That suited me just fine.

We got back on the ferry and headed home. Not long and the kids were alseep and we still had to eat dinner. Waking up sleep deprived children after them sleeping 5 minutes is not fun as they don't go back to sleep right away. Two hours later, they finally drifted off. We got home at 10:30.

It was a spectacular day. The kids had a blast. So did Ed and I. I would recommend going there. It's beautiful and going on a Friday was excellent as it wasn't too busy and we could navigate easily around the horse poop that Sam so willingly called out to us to beware of every time he saw a pile.