The Mackinaw City Trip

Tuesday was a beautiful day for a drive through the countryside and a visit to Mackinaw City.  We took the back roads from Harbor Springs stopping by McGulpin Point Lighthouse.  The lighthouse was built in the 1850’s and was in service until 1906.  It became a private residence in 1913 until 2008 at which time Emmett County bought the reactivated the light putting it back on the navigational charts.  We toured the grounds and the lighthouse.  The views from the top of the light are stunning.  You can double click on any of the pictures to make them larger.

  

Upon leaving McGulpin Point “Feed Me” showed up.  Now Mike, Peggy, Judy, and I have eaten pizza together all over the country and realized that Michigan was one state that was not on our pizza map.  So we made a quick trip to the Pizza Palace in Mackinaw City.  The owner greeted us at the door, all decked out in his best Italian regalia.  He told us that if we found a better pizza anywhere in Michigan, he’d buy it for us.  Well, we all agreed that the Pizza Palace has very good pizza, but we have a lot of pizza joints to try to find out if it is the best in Michigan.

  

After licking our chops at the Pizza Palace, we did a walk around the city docks.  The decommissioned Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw is on display there as well as an active duty Coast Guard buoy tender.  The CGC Mackinaw is the same one that was in service when I was in the Coast Guard and stationed in Michigan.  The buoy tender is similar to the one I was stationed on in Charlevoix, Michigan.

 

Next we drove up the street to the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse where we walked about the grounds snapping pictures of the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Island.  If you look real carefully at the Island pictures, you can see the Grand Hotel, however, it was a little hazy looking across the Straits.

  

We drove through the Tunnel of Trees which is a twenty mile scenic drive along the coast of Lake Michigan from Cross Village to Harbor Springs.  About half way between is the little town of Good Hart where we stopped at an old time General Store.  Upon returning home, some little faces showed up wondering, “When are we going to eat?”

 

We finished the day on the beach watching another beautiful sunset.  That’s a sail boat in the pictures and a seagull doing a fly by in the “no fly zone”.

 

Yesterday we did, indeed, get some much needed rain.  Mike, Peggy, Judy, and I had lunch at the Pier restaurant right on the waterfront in Harbor Springs.  They have some of the best seafood chowder that you can imagine for a midwest restaurant.  From there we made a trip to the Harbor Springs IGA to get some flat iron steaks for dinner.  A nap snuck into the afternoon and then the munchkins arrived bringing “Feed Me” with them.  It was a quiet evening at home, well, as quiet as it can be with three “kids” and two “katts” “kouped” up in a “kamper”. 

Another fine ending to another “kouple” of days in the life.  May God Bless  - - - - - - - -