Mackinaw Island

 During our family planning sessions everyone voted that they wanted to stop by Mackinaw Island again (we had just been here in June with our exchange students).  We radioed in and were luck enough to get in for two nights right before the Labor Day weekend.  Its always fun being on the island.  We rented bikes.  Unfortunately the relatively flat loop around the island was mostly closed this time so we pedaled our way up the big hill to check on some of the stuff we had not seen in a few years like the Butterfly House, Carriage Museum, and Grand Hotel.  The kids got board at the Carriage Museum and decided to go back to the boat letting Amy and I take a slower pace enjoying other small stops along the way.  Before we left I sent Max a picture of the forge that was set up allowing tourists to craft their own knifes.  Of course by the time he saw this we had made our way to the bottom of the hill and was pretty excited to go back up and check it out.  Amy left us to head back to the boat.  I got another reminder of how out of shape I am now peddling up this hill for the 3rd time that day but Max was excited so that helped motivate me a bit.  Once there he decided to try the experience and pounded out his own knife from an old rail road spike.  Max has been bugging me for the last two years to build a forge with him at our house ever since earning his metal working badge at summer camp a couple years ago.  Not to mention that one of the older kids from his school is interested in this and has created a nice set up at home.

On our second day we met another couple on a custom tug that it turned out had been part of our sailing club many years ago.  They told us about their plans to do the bridge walk that weekend and we decided to stay and take advantage of the one day a year folks were allowed to walk the Mackinaw Bridge.  Overall it was nice to spend a couple of nice nights on the island.  The next day we planed to venture over to St. Ignace where we planned to stay until the bridge walk on Labor Day.