How many times have we been to Mackinac Island? We think three times before today. One time we even met some friends who were on their boat traveling the Great Lakes (you know who you are!). We saw this boat docked and thought about that time!

The sunrise from the ship was beautiful this morning with a brisk temperature of 57 degrees!

Everyone must take the tender to shore for their excursions or to just walk around and enjoy the island. Mackinac translated from Native American language means Great Turtle. It was a burial ground for Native American tribes. Then the French arrived, then the British claimed it after, and finally the United States won it. Of course, there was another skirmish/war in 1812. So, as you can tell the island has a long history, not to be explained in this blog. One factoid is that Mackinac Island was the second National Park in 1875 until the Federal Government gave the land back in 1895 to Michigan and Michigan made it a State Park. 83% of the island is a park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island

An activity we never did the other times we visited – a carriage ride around the island. As you may know, no cars are on this island. There are only horses, horse drawn carriages, and bicycles. We arrive at the dock and then a short walk to board the carriage that is waiting on Main Street. Once on the carriage, the tour guide tells us what we are seeing along the way. Here are a few pictures.

Of course, the most famous building is the Grand Hotel. Photo from Grand Hotel website. https://www.grandhotel.com

I was not able to get a picture of the Grand Hotel as we were sitting on the wrong side in the back of the carriage as they drove by. Lol

The first part of this carriage ride is on a carriage pulled by two horses. You disembark this carriage at their tourist center and transfer to another one pulled uphill through the park by three horses.

The horses do not spend the winters on the island. They go to a farm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The season on Mackinac Island is from May – end of October with 1500 people serving 15,000 visitors a day. Only 500 residents live on the island year-round.

The tour continues through the state park woods (lots of northern white cedar) on a trail for the carriages. People are hiking and biking along the way. A few other tourist sights we see are skull cave, Arch Rock, and the final stop at Fort Mackinac. We have done the fort tour before so we just walked down to the town from the top.

The view is quite spectacular from the fort. Definitely worth visiting.

The many bed and breakfast are lovely with beautiful gardens out front. The flowers are always spectacular in bloom in the summers.

While there are 17 Fudge stores, we do not need to buy any! I did ask the question of why are there so many fudge stores. The funny answer is “because there is so much horse manure, it makes really good fudge.” The real answer is that the Fort Mackinac soldiers would always have fudge for dessert so the island adopted it as the favorite sweet food to sell.

The only way to get to the car-free island if you do not have your own boat is on the Shepler’s Ferry service. Coming and going all day long!

We are back on the ship in the afternoon. The ship has to reposition because the wind picked up and the water became quite rough for the tenders. This was nice because we had a different view of the island and the strait’s buildings.

The ship sails away at 5:00 PM and we are able to have a great view sailing under the Mackinac Bridge.

Tonight the scientists on board will be launching a weather balloon from Deck 7. We are invited to observe on Deck 6. More on this tomorrow!