Monday, 31 July – Mackinaw Mill Creek CG, Mackinaw, MI 49701

Up at 8am, on the road by 9.30am,  ready to enjoy a warm, sunny day.  At the cost of an extra 30 minutes drive time we choose the more scenic route, SH 23 along the coastline of Lake Huron.  This area looks to have been settled for some time and you can see why that would be - the lake views are lovely, the lake houses are a bit older.  They all seem to have some kind of unique identifying ‘thing’ by the letterbox, we assume to remind them and their friends which house is there’s.  We stop at the first little seaside town of Tapas for food supplies and this Walmart resides right across the main road from the Lake.

Walmart car park looks over Lake Huron, prime real estate

There is a noticeable French influence here judging by the town names we drove by, Au Gres, Au Sable, but it makes sence as  Lake Huron is shared by Canada’s French regions and the very north of Michigan almost touches Ontario.

Next stop we need is a Home Depot, Kim wants to do boys shopping so the Garmin finds us one in Alpena, another nice little lakeside town. I take myself off and do girls shopping next door.  Lo and behold - there is a Maccas next door to Home Depot so the fast is duly broken!  He did say afterwards that it was just a bit disappointing and not that enjoyable : (

Nice beaches, separate cycle track travels alongside the road

Diesel is next on the agenda, Gas Buddy helped us find the best price - $2.379/G and we’re happy with that for these parts.

Michigan has 65,000 inland lakes and ponds and 3,200 miles of Great Lakes Shoreline and you are never more than 85 miles from the shores of one of the Great Lakes.  You can see why Michigan has 1 million registered boats.

Then we are back on SH 23 for the remainder of our drive.  It was our intention to stay at P.H. Hoeft State Park near Rogers City, it reads/looks good on AllStays but it really doesn’t offer a large enough site for us.  We take a look around (twice) but decide to move on.  It’s around 2.30pm by now so start making some phone calls to book in somewhere.  After another two false starts we eventually pull into Mackinaw Mill Creek CG (who said on the phone they were full) and we got a site for tonight and a different site for tomorrow night.  This actually works out well, this CG was on our radar for later this week, because they offer a free shuttle to the ferry over to Mackinac Island.   Expensive though, at $53/night. 

It’s hot and sunny - 29C.  We are close to the top of the mitt and can see the famous Mackinac Bridge from the lakefront – ‘Big Mac’ was built in 1967 and boasts of being the longest suspension bridge in the hemisphere, but I remember saying the same thing about the Chesapeake Bridge in Virginia - anyway they can fight that out!  The bridge is 5 miles across and spans the Straits of Mackinac, between the lower and upper peninsulas.

Mackinac Bridge at sunset from shore of Lake Huron

After dinner we go for another walk along the lake front and check out the store and pool etc.  The store sells icecream, I have already picked what flavour I will have tomorrow, not having one today, still full from the last one!  It’s just getting dark by the time we get back after 9.30 pm.