Mackinac Island

During our trip to Michigan, we drove through a stormy, dreary morning to go see Mackinac Island.  By the time we got up to Mackinac, the rain started to clear out.  We visited the lighthouse, drove over the Mackinac Bridge, climbed up to Castle Rock, and took a ferry over to the island itself to see what we could see.

The lighthouse - the kids, Erin, and I went up to the top first...

A view of the bridge

Daddy got stuck with the next tour, which happened to have a couple of very curious and chatty ladies who caused him to get "stuck" enjoying the views from the top of the lighthouse for quite some time.

After we eventually got Thom John back, we drove across the bridge and stopped at a tourist outpost to see Castle Rock.  The funky ceiling of the souvenir shop:

Views from the top:

Next, we waited for a ferry to take us over to Mackinac Island:

Our tour of the island included lunch, walking on the main street, walking around the Fort, a hike in the woods, and really neat views of the shoreline.

We hiked to see Skull Cave, which sounded super-cool but really wasn't.  It didn't have skulls nor was it much of a cave rather than a depression in the hillside. The gang was disapointed.

We stopped for ice cream, of course!

While waiting to take the ferry back to the mainland, we strolled by some Victorian-style houses and the kids hopped on the beach to throw rocks in Lake Huron.

Tall Ships

The Tall Ships came to Philadelphia and Camden at the end of June.  We started out by parking at Rutgers in Camden and then walking over the Ben Franklin Bridge to the Philly side to see what we could see.  The kids stayed awake for this trip over the bridge - unlike last time :-)

The first ship we saw was the USCGC Eagle - the same ship that Pop Pop learned on when he was coming up in the Coast Guard Academy!  The kids were very excited to see this ship.  They were actually pretty good while we waited in line and posed for lots of pictures...

Finally on the Eagle:

We toured a couple more ships before walking down the pier to go see L'Hermione.  On the way, we watched this ship set sail for home - Portugal!

We found a junior rubber ducky - much smaller than the seven-story rubber ducky that we were promised (it kept blowing over, so the organizers took the big ducky down).

We did make it to L'Hermione but it was closed for a private cocktail party!  Gee whiz!

So, we walked back up the pier and sought out the River Link Ferry to go back to Camden but the line was about 10 miles long!  So we decided we would walk back over the bridge but first we stopped at a cafe on Race Street for refreshment.

Clare rested:

Clare perked up on the walk back over the bridge and both kids spent the last part of the walk giving me 20,000 heart attacks by running around on the bridge like crazy people!

And to cap off our Philly day, we stopped at Wawa for hoooagies for dinner :-)