Or I should say Lake Michigan and Mackinaw City. We left St. Ignace on Thursday morning, prepped for a long day to get into Lake Michigan and over to Beaver Island. Lake Michigan, however, had other ideas. The “waves two feet or less” forecast were easily four feet, with 15 knots of westerly wind pushing them our way. We pounded into it for about an hour after passing under the Mackinac Bridge, and decided to turn around instead of lurching forward like that for another five or six hours. Instead of going back to St. Ignace, we went to Mackinaw City at the top of the mitten that is Michigan.
Mackinac, Mackinaw … both are pronounced the same, the woman at the Mackinaw Municipal Marina told me. The spelling ‘Mackinac’ comes of the French who named and held onto the area above the Lakes; the British who took over lower Michigan changed the spelling to Mackinaw to better reflect the pronunciation. Mackinac Straits, Island, and Bridge, are all pronounced the same as Mackinaw City.
The City is cute tourist town with more fudge and t-shirts, being the gateway to both Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island. We spent two days in the marina here, waiting for a good weather window. The nearby park was filled with a re-enactment settlement of French, Indians, and British and Thursday they held a trading fair which offered homemade soaps, baskets, and beaded moccasins and things like axe throwing contests. We spent a time there as well as browsing through the shops, and we went to an afternoon matinee of the movie Oppenheimer. It’s been a long time since we went to see a movie in a theater!
Saturday, August 5th, our weather window arrived and we left for Beaver Island. This time the wind and waves were behind us, still a bit lumpy but not like Thursday. Beaver Island has a bit of history in the Mormon legacy - a sect of the Latter Day Saints settled here, started making their own rules, and declared themselves their own kingdom, separate from the US. It’s in Wikipedia if you want to look it up. Due to the wind forecast, we ended up not anchoring there, but in a snug cove on nearby Garden Island.
Sunday we hoped to make another open-water crossing over to Big Bay de Noc
in upper Green Bay, but once again Lake Michigan had its own plans for us. This time the two-feet-or-less waves were three-feet-or-more on the quarter beam. Lurching over them to move forward is one thing, rolling back and forth through them is another. We put up with it for a couple of hours and then decided to change our heading and let them push us north to Manistique instead.
Manistique is a small town with a breakwater and lots of beaches fronted by a two mile walking path. One end goes directly into town, the other end is a nice walk along the shore. We went that way on our walk. We did find a very large, very nice grocery store, and bought what we could carry back without too much trouble. There weren’t many people on the walk or the beaches, but we were approached by a little boy very eager to tell us that grasshoppers had wings. “That’s so cool!” Dan replied, and the little guy, bursting to impart knowledge, told us they could hop and fly! Awesome! There is nothing as fun as seeing things through the eyes of a four year old.
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