St. Ignace

We decided to stay in St Ignace for 3 days so we could do the bridge walk. This worked out well as the lake conditions were not that great the day we left Mackinaw Island and it was supposed to rain the next day.  The marina was really nice.  It was in town with good places to eat and the city had something planed for every night.  They were showing movies in the park one night, had a two day art fair, and fireworks another night.  We made our first friends on the dock that offered to take us to the grocery store.  Amy had provisioned to be able to feed us for about 3-4 weeks when we left but we were low on bread, milk, and of course the kids had eaten most of the chips, crackers, and other junk food by this point.  Needless to say we took the opportunity to restock a bit.  We had our first true off day where no one really wanted to do anything while it was raining so we watched movies and played a games together.

The bridge walk was a new experience for us.  I had heard about it, I had even ridden my bike over the bridge one year about 25years ago when I was still in collage. We found a kind soul on the dock who was willing to drive us up to the park where it starts at about 7am.  The Governor comes out gives a bit of a speech and then leads everyone (probably at least 1000 folks just on this side) across the bridge.  I had expected to to be cold but we got a pretty nice morning for it.  Once you get out on the bridge they have someone stationed about every 100 feet.  At first its bridge Maintance folks then it was State Police Officers.  I have no idea how they got that many to work on a holiday weekend unless they made all the ones in the training academy do it?  Anyway buy about the time your nearing the halfway point you can really start to feel the bridge sway.  They say it moves as much as 30ft side to side.  At the highest point we really looked like a group of drunken sailors out for a walk.  A few folks lost their balance fell down.  Because of the metal grating on the bridge we saw several they were cut up pretty badly from the fall.  We were lucky enough not to have any such accidents but it was a bit scary to look down though the grates to see the water so far below you.  Unfortunately this year because of CoVID they were not running the usual busing to bring folks back from Mackinaw City if you decided to walk all the way across it would mean we would need to catch a ferry over to Mackinaw Island then from there back to St. Ignace.  This was not going to be cheap for 4 of us.. So we elected to turn around at the halfway point and walk back.  I should note this was much to the disappointment of my daughter that was convinced she wanted to walk the fully 5 miles over the bridge, then 5 miles back, and 3 more back to the marina.  Once we got to the halfway point Amy did offer to keep going with her but she backed out opting to walk back with Max and I.  We appreciated the gesture :)

Once we got back we made breakfast and got the boat prepped to go.  The weather was good but the lake conditions under the bridge no so great.  It looked like we were supposed to have 4-6 foot waves for about 5 miles around the bridge.  Then things would level out to 2-3's rest the way.  If we did not leave Monday, it looked like we would be stuck in St Ignace for at least the next 2 days.  We really needed to start making some progress so we decided to go.  Sure enough the waves were big when we got out there.  I'm sure we saw a few that were 10 or more.  But like they predicted after about 5 miles we were down to 4's then about 20-30 miles after that the lake had calmed down to pretty consistent 3 foot swells.  We did a lot of rocking and rolling and were really happy to find an open dock in Petoskey for the night.

Ever since buying our first boat I had been wanting to bring it up to Mackinaw and say I took it under the bridge.  I'm not sure why but it was something I have wanted to do for over 13 years now.  We got close one time when we had the Beneteau up at the island a few years ago but for some reason I elected not to spend the 3 hours or so it would take to say I had crossed over into Lake Michigan.  I was pretty excited to go under the bridge that day so hardly noticed the huge waves breaking over our bow and it was a neat experience.  I really hope to have the time to do it again one day!  Hopefully a day with better conditions :). Plus how many folks can way they went over and under the bridge in the same day!