Canada ride- Part V

St. Ignace, MI is a beautiful place. Definitely a tourist attraction because of neighboring Mackinac Island (and the historical bridge, of course), but still gorgeous. It's right on lakes Michigan and Huron, and is a really cute little town with lots of bed&breakfasts, bars, ice cream shops and hotels. We stayed at a hotel that was right on the water and it was awesome. I had never stayed anywhere that close to a lake, or slept in a hotel bed that comfortable. We walked up to some restaurant right on the water and had fresh fish from Huron, and I sat out on the beach that night and enjoyed some time alone. The view of the stars was almost as good as what I have out in Iowa, so that was pretty neat too.


The next morning, we went out to Mackinac Island. The ferry tickets are expensive, but worth it seeing that it's really the only way for a tourist to actually get to the island instead of by air.
Mackinac Island is really interesting because those who live/work there don't use motor-driven transportation. The only motors on the island belong to landscaping equipment and emergency vehicles. The cops only use the cop cars when they really need them, and usually patrol on bike or horseback. There's also tons of places to rent bicycles from there- it's the best way to get around town.

(View of the Island from the ferry)

But perhaps the most fascinating part of Mackinac is it's architecture. I'm not an expert on architecture, but it's loaded with classic Victorian and New England-style homes, which is something I'm not used to seeing in the heart of the Midwest.

(Taxi!)

There's also a ton of places to shop/eat/whatever here. Neat bike shops that will make you a custom bike during your stay using old Schwinns and new Schwinns, plenty of fudge and candy shops, museums, etc. Did I mention the architecture was beautiful?

After we had our fill of awesomeness, we crossed the historic Mackinaw Bridge (Watch the ModernMarvels episode on this, it's actually fascinating) and headed towards the Flint, MI area and tried to avoid Detroit traffic. We didn't do a very good job of that and found ourselves dodging through some messy roads and at around 10pm, landed in ___, to hook up with the president of our motorcycle club.

(Continued in Part VI)