St. Ignace

Mackinaw Mills Campground

I didn’t have much planned for my stay here in Mackinaw City, other than I knew at least one day was going to be spent on Mackinac Island. My campground offers discounted tickets for the ferry ride over, but the camp store that sells them still has somewhat limited hours since it is not peak season yet, so they were closed before I was able to check-in yesterday, and didn’t open until 1 PM today. So I spent a pretty lazy morning around the campground, waiting for the store to open. First, troubleshooting an issue I’ve been having with my Starlink internet setup (thought I was going to get a break from that kind of crap while not working), and then walking around exploring. I also popped my drone up for a bit, it really is amazing how large this campground is. I was more than a quarter mile off shore and almost 400 feet up, and it still took two pictures to get all of the lakefront of the campground photographed:

Lake Huron itself is pretty awesome too, that color and clarity is usually something I associate with the Caribbean. Here I am sitting on the bench with my campsite directly behind me. It’s really unfortunate that the flies make it pretty much impossible to enjoy sitting outside right now, it would be nice to sit on the lakefront and enjoy the sunsets.

St. Ignace

Castle Rock

After picking up my ferry ticket for tomorrow, I headed across the Mackinac Bridge over to St. Ignace for the day. A $4 toll each way means I’m not trying to go back and forth a bunch of times. My first stop was Castle Rock: It was very touristy, but for only $1 admission, I thought I’d give it a try. It did have nice views after climbing the stairs up almost 200 feet to the top, and the combination of it is not being peak season, it was a Monday afternoon, and it is a somewhat mediocre stop I was the only one at the top. Mackinac Island from Castle Rock: I-75, then the Mackinac County Airport, then St. Ignace, then the Mackinac Bridge in the background: You also get rewarded in more than just views for your effort:

Downtown

Afterwards I headed down town. If you are in to shopping, there was a decent number of stores. I didn’t really know what I was looking to do, but it wasn’t shopping. I did come across a lighthouse at Chief Wawatam Park: Not sure who he is, the flies were swarming so bad along here I turned around before I could read any of the plaques. It was a nice looking little lighthouse though:

Mackinac Bridge

Since I wasn’t interested in the shopping and I wasn’t ready to start drinking, I headed out of downtown to some parks. Straits State Park had a really nice overlook of the Mackinac Bridge, one of the largest suspension bridges in the world: Straits State Park requires a Michigan park passport for entrance though, a free alternative that was right on the water was the Bridge View Park. Bridge View Park was convenient because I didn’t even have to leave my car, which was being swarmed by flies being that close to the water. The view was pretty nice too:

Mackinac vs Mackinaw

FYI, I did my best spelling Mackinac and Mackinaw correctly depending on to what they are referring, but in case like me you wondered about the difference, here is what I found when I looked it up: Mackinac Island Website