Its hard to believe, but Dad made it to Mackinaw an unprecedented third time this year, this time due to work. A customer in Saulte Ste Marie Canada needed help with a tester and Dad was sent to take care of it.

Dad has been to Mackinaw in the winter, spring, and summer, but never in the fall and it was very interesting to him because you could see the tourist area starting to get a little ready for Halloween. Many stores were closed but enough of them were open that Dad could pick up a few souvenirs.

Always beautiful in any season.
Continue reading “Mackinaw Third Visit (Sept 2022)” →

Our second trip to Mackinaw was a quick one, but we still had a blast. It was a one day visit and the weather was perfect. James got to spend a little time at the beach and Mary got to see a sunset. Our main purpose in this trip was to see the Northern Lights which were supposed to be very visible, but unfortunately we did not notice anything special in the night sky except the lights from the bridge.

The next day we visited the Deer ranch in St. Ignace (which was our reason to cross the bridge. James fed them carrots but kept his mask on as he wanted to make sure the upper peninsula was safe from any lower peninsula germs. Continue reading “Mackinaw Second Visit (August 2022)” →

The long standing haunted house on Mackinaw Island was not open till 11pm for some reason, but we did finally make it there and went through the house. The haunted house is sort of a wax museum with some animatronics and is very traditional and fun.

Dads facebook profile photo for years has been Dad and James at the top of the steps of the haunted house so we decided to take that picture again, about 12 years later.

Our favorite at the haunted house was probably the coffin that opens and a corpse sits up and turns around and looks at you. Nice effect! Continue reading “Haunted House – Mackinaw Island 2022” →

The weather was still cloudy and about 55-65 degrees so it was a very comfortable trip to the island. Once again we took the ferry across, although we did not remember the $35 charge to park. This year we stayed on main street and shopped as we felt it was too “buggy” to go into the woods as there were tons of mayflies flying around.

Stopped at Joann Fudge to get some maple fudge for Mom, plus lots of t shirts for the family at monster tee. We noticed the magic shop was gone, replace by what we think was a jewelry store.

We noticed it was just starting to get busy as this was the Friday of Memorial day. We were happy coming up earlier so we missed most of the tourist who came up for the weekend.
Continue reading “Mackinaw Island 2022” →

After our traditional smelt basket dinner at Audi’s, we went shopping at the tourist traps in Mackinaw city. We saw that the haunted house there was open so we decided to give it a whirl. All three of us went into the house and we all had a great time. The haunted house had some great animatronics and even a talking statue (projection) that gave us an introduction to the house.

Lots of scares in this haunted house and I believe this was the first time any of us had gone through this house (the one on Mackinaw Island is much older and we have done that one several times.

For the record, our favorite scene was the last one with the crazy kid animatronic running around. Continue reading “Haunted House – Mackinaw City 2022” →

Our first visit since before the pandemic was a successful one. It was the day before the Memorial day crowd would show up so we had the city pretty much to ourselves. Lots of shopping for goodies and t-shirts. Once again we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express there and they were still doing construction on something in the lobby (when we were there last time, there was also construction of some kind going on).

The breakfast was great and everyone had a great time in the city. We did notice that all the kite shops seemed to have disappeared which is unfortunate. For dinner we had pizza and wings two days in a row. Thats why its a vacation. Continue reading “Macinaw City 2022” →

We arrived at Mackinaw a little early, our check in time at the hotel was 3pm so we decided to head further North, about 50 minutes, to Saulte Ste Marie which is the Northern end of Michigan and also the Northern end of I75 (which actually starts in Florida).

When we arrived at the locks we saw something we had never seen before, a Viking cruise ship going through the locks. We had seen tankers and every other kind of vessel, but never a cruise ship.

We stopped in at the tourist traps across from the locks (the locks are run by the army corp of engineers and the tourist traps are right across the street). There certainly seemed to be alot of big foot stuff, almost like the official mascot of up north.

A great time was had by all and why not, this was the first place we went to for our honeymoon 19 years ago! Continue reading “Soo Locks – Saulte Ste. Marie 2022” →

It was a wee bit chilly on the boat ride to and from Mackinaw city, but we survived and then bought Mackinaw sweaters on the island. James and Dad went through the Mirror Maze and completed it, then followed up with a visit to the haunted house where James survived terrifying creatures of the night. Mom loved the shopping and we all met up to go down to the rock beach and attempt to skip stones. Like the city, new stores replace old every year and this year was no different, with the Magic shop next to the haunted house gone. One thing that was really different was seeing a cruise ship docked at Mackinaw City, seems an 11 day cruise of the Great Lakes was taking place which started in Chicago, how fun would that be!

Continue reading “Mackinaw Island 2017” →

It seems that every year we go to Mackinaw there is something new to see. This year we noticed a couple magic shops were missing but a new haunt had appeared. Unfortunately by the time we got to Mackinaw Crossing the haunts were closed, at least we got to go through the one on the island. After checking out all the souvenir stores at the crossing, James found a laser game he liked and did it a couple times till he made the top ten and got a little cert from the store that he had accomplished this feat. Meanwhile Mom was thrilled that the lilac bushes in the city were blooming and took several pics of them. Toward the evening we went to the park where James jumped back and forth under the bridge between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

Continue reading “Mackinaw City 2017” →

Nothing like a trip up to northern Michigan to beat the 90 degree heat with 70 degree temps. Mackinac City was packed and the weather was overcast all day so I am assuming that a lot of people who would normally have taken the ferry to the island decided to play it safe and stay on the peninsula. Since our last visit one of our shopping stops has turned into an arcade, which is fine since we have so many places to shop in Mackinac but not many arcades. James got to visit Sea Shell City and throw rocks into Lake Huron so he was content (plus getting some souvenirs and tshirts). All in all a very fun trip and a nice way to beat the summer humidity and heat.

Fortunately the Great Lakes have plenty of rocks to throw into the lakes, despite James best effort there were plenty of rocks left when he left

Continue reading “Mackinaw 2016” →