Grand Marais and Mackinaw City

Next stop Grand Marais, a tiny city with working church bells and a fantastic pizza place on Lake Superior.

Not much happened there as it was thunder storming and drizzling almost the entire time.  I didn't take any photos as it was too wet.  Also, there is not much to see or do there if you're not a fisherman, kayaker, or boater.  

We had no Internet and no cell phone service, no card or board games, no TV, and Staff ran out of reading material.  Way too early to go to bed, so we drove into town and dropped in a sports outfitter store. Surprise! There was samoyed named, Heiki. It turns out that the wife of the owner researched a bunch of different breeds, and after failing to find a samoyed rescue dog, she got Heiki from a breeder.  They had lived previously in North Carolina with their daughter and then moved to G. Marais to open the little fishing/sporting goods store.  Unfortunately we didn't ask what brought them to this tiny fishing town. I still wonder about their story.  It's gotta be interesting.

The other highlight of G. Marais was a crowded bar with raucous laughter that hit you like a wall as you opened the door.  I'm more of a quiet coffee house person, but when in Rome.  So I ordered myself a pint of red micro-brew, and Staff and I shared a mouth-watering cheese pizza, with fresh mozzarella and tomato sauce with exactly the right amount of seasoning.  Hard to find.  That pizza was so good, it rivaled Sal's Pizza in Port Chester, NY.  I can't say that about many pizzas. 

Oh, and they don't have city snow plowers in Grand Marais, they have "Snow Fighters" who fight the snow with plows about 8 feet high. I'm not kidding. Check out the sign.

Next stop, today, Mackinaw City.  After driving 16  miles out of our way because I misread the map, (Small detail- I failed to notice that our first choice campsite was located on the side of the bridge we just came from.  Staff was not about to drive our rig back over the 5 mile bridge for a darn campsite.)


We finally arrived at the KOA campground, an even better place, as KOA usually are clean and full of services.

The "Mighty Mac"

I had a yen to bike around Mackinaw Island. It interested me for its beauty and history.  You may know that no cars or motorized anything are allowed.  Lots of horses and cyclists, to which Staff saw a great "pedicab" opportunity. 

Gorgeous mansions with perfect flowery gardens dot the hillsides. Staff pointed out, this is where the 1% have their vacation homes. Hard to say which was more beautiful, the architecture of these homes and their gardens or the lush green forests with overhanging trees and exposed knotty roots along the bike path. The air there was so fresh, almost sweet, kind of how the air smells in Door County. I made sure to take some big gulping inhales of that fresh air, a nice treat for my asthmatic lungs.

In search of the famous Grand Hotel, we stumbled across Fort Mackinac.  According to the sign, it was built by the British and was finally turned over to the Americans after the Revolutionary War.  It was guarded by soldiers for about 100 years afterward.  I had wanted to see the Grand Hotel because it was the filming location of one of my favorite movies, "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.  I don't want to spoil the movie, but let's just say, it's very beautiful and so tragic in the end that you may need to schedule an extra therapy session.

Well, we didn't exactly find the Grand Hotel, but we did tour the island and its interior on our bicycles. Below shows one of our discoveries on the windy roads along the hills on the island, Arch Rock, a natural archy rock formation. We did see the Grand Hotel from the ferry as we pulled out of the dock.  It looked lovely.