2024 Family Vacation Day4: Mackinac City

 We started our day with pancakes. Which is pretty much the best way to start a vacation day.

After breakfast, we walked around the touristy area. Very little was open, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

Next, we were ready to head over to the island. We dropped off our car at the day lot and took the shuttle over to the ferry. Once our tickets were purchased we stood in line. It was about a 20 minute wait. Everything was very clean and timely.

Ben, A, and I rode down below while Gabe and Tim rode up top. It was a nice 20 minute ride with a small detour to view the underside of the Mackinaw Bridge. Before we knew it, we were on the island!

We were immediately greeted by the sight of horses which A loved! After grabbing coffee, we scouted out the Pierre Marquette statue. We love the Pierre Marquette park in IL and thought it was neat that he was so present in MI, too.

Next, we hiked up the bluff to the fort. Everything was very well done. We wandered through the various buildings telling the story of the fort through the years. 

Littlest Soldier

Drum time

Musket firing demo

Reporting for duty

View from the top

View of the fort from the park down below. 

Fort entrance.

The hospital was my favorite building. Very interesting to see how illness and injury was handled so long ago. 

Since we were already up on the bluff, we hiked about 20 minutes to the coast to see Arch Rock. After snapping a few pictures we walked down 200 stairs and then followed the road back to town.

Little Miss fell asleep in her stroller at about this time. We decided to grab some food and air conditioning. She was fast asleep the entire time

The Pink Pony is an island favorite and it did not disappoint. 

Lilac lemonade

From there, we strolled to Windemere Point, where the annual rock-skipping competitions are held. I guess there's nothing magical about the spot because we were all still terrible.

At this point we'd seen the big things we wanted to see do we did some shopping. Along the way we talked ourselves into buying some fudge. We see fudge shops on every.single.vacation. we go on and we never buy any. But fudge is a big deal on the island so we ducked into one of the shops and bought a block to share. It was fantastic. 

After we'd finished our shopping we hopped on the ferry back to the mainland. After dinner we decided on ice cream again. Great decision!