The plan today was to head over to Mackinac Island. It's again freezing cold, 14C but feels even colder due to the wind.
We went down to the port but decided to go to the museum of the local Indian tribe, the Ojibwas. It was pretty interesting with a lot of genuine, found on the site, artefacts.
From there we returned to the port where the ferries go from but it was still miserable and starting to drizzle, just for a change. As bad as it was there we figured it would only be worse on an island and there's little to do on the island other than walk and explore; no fun at all in this weather so we reluctantly made the decision to move on.
We crossed over the big bridge complete with a $4 toll, they do love their tolls around here!
We came across several small flocks of wild turkeys just grazing beside the road. We stopped to check one lot out and they were very wary of us particularly Pete when he got his camera out.
We followed Lake Michigan starting at Petoskey which we thought was a lovely town until we realised it was probably a bit out of our league. Not sure if it was the yacht club, country club, immaculate golf club complete with a security guard shed at the access point or the equestrian centre that gave that away lol.
The lake on this windy day again had waves bigger than we get at Redcliffe except for when we have a huge storm. We stopped by the lake at a nice little park for lunch but nearly got blown away lol So instead we found a great cafe along the way and stopped there. Excellent food in a cosy warm cafe, all we could ask for

At a road side farmers stall we bought some gorgeous apricots, maple syrup and home baked mixed berry and blueberry pies.
We passed a lot of orchards, Xmas tree farms, vineyards, hop & corn fields. It's been a much better wildlife spotting day: squirrels incl a black one, lots of geese, deer, a rabbit, a pair of bald eagles and a kestrel.
There's a lot of mini golf places and many many golf courses we spotted along this way, the grass un-naturally bright green, could they spray with some sort of dye?
There must've been a big storm through recently cos we saw a lot of trees that looked like they'd been split, torn down. Further along, ironically near Glen Arbour, it got worse. There were huge areas of trees which were absolutely decimated and there were tree crews working to make them safe. Some signs we sighted today; on a garage "a******s garage" at a motel "pet and Harley friendly" a laundromat called "suds for duds"
From one of the viewpoints we stopped at we could see a band of sunlight across the lake. It gives us hope to know it's still summer somewhere lol
An inordinate amount of land, homes and farms are for sale through this area and there's quite a few seemingly abandoned businesses. Tough time hangover after the GFC?
According to google maps from St Ignace to Grand Rapids is 3 hours 40 mins. As usual we avoided highways opting instead to follow the lake as best as we could and stopped when the whim took us. In the end it took us nearly 10 hours, arriving at our hotel at 9.40.
The sunset was spectacular as was the close to full moon which seemed super close.