Leaving Cedarville on another cool gray morning, we headed off to St. Ignace. Riding with John and some miles into the ride (about which I can remember little else), we suddenly rode into a thicket of flies. Thinking it was a momentary thing, I concentrated on keeping my mouth closed-- past experience being a guide to the undesirability of swallowing bugs of any kind. I noticed that there were hundreds of the same insects dead on the shoulder of the road and wondered what was killing them. Then I noticed that many of the flying ones were in mating pairs and that I could see single flies plummeting to earth for no apparent reason. John suggested that these were mayflies and later research confirmed this.
Mayfly "hatches" are becoming more numerous in recent years and attest to the growing health of large bodies of water such as the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Erie (although we were cycling along Lake Huron). The water stage lasts about a year but the adult stage can be as short as an hour. The adults have only one mission and that is to mate and if female, to lay eggs. Our experience with them was more interesting than annoying-- they don't bite or sting and judging from pictures like the one below, the numbers we saw were actually quite small. This is a guy blowing dead mayflies off his deck.
Our riding route brought us back to St. Ignace, the town at the northern end of the Mackinac Bridge and the location of the ferry that was to bring us to Mackinac Island. Wow! What a place! Touristy for sure but we were ready for some tourist whoopee after the woods and mosquitoes of the U.P. A fast boat ride and we were in another world.
The mingled smells of fudge and horse manure (I like both, fortunately-- or perhaps unfortunately in case of the fudge) greeted us as we walked from the ferry dock onto the crowded Main Street. Mackinac is car free and has been since 1901 when an early "horseless carriage" terrified some real horses and caused injuries. Upon asking I learned that there were 450 horses on the island as of our visit with 50 more to come when the season heated up. One can join a carriage ride, rent a horse and carriage or simply rent a riding horse. Island residents have barns, horses, carriages and etc. There are carriage taxis and heavy horse drays (like flatbed trucks). All of those horses poop! Cleaning up after them is a major source of jobs on the island-- probably more people sweeping up poop than making fudge. The Main Street is continually swept and power washed every night. Mackinac sees 15,000 day trippers in high season and although we weren't quite there yet, there must have been 10,000. Many of them rent bicycles, tandems, bikes with baby and dog carriers and teeter off down the street dodging pedestrians, horses, carriages and other bicyclists-- and not always successfully. One of our group, standing still on her bicycle, was hit head on by a young man piloting a tandem with his adoring girlfriend behind-- perhaps not so adoring when his lack of skill was so clearly demonstrated and our victim was sufficiently injured to go to the island medical facility.
This is a picture of the Mackinac Island Airport with a "taxi" waiting for customers.
A three horse team gets watered and sprayed with citronella while the passengers are viewing Arch Rock. The horses work four hour shifts per day and stay in the same team and with the same driver as much as possible.
Arch Rock with the water far below. Not really visible in the picture but we could see that visitors had made hearts and initials in the shallow water with carefully arranged stones.
There is no shortage of composting materials on the Island and beautiful gardens attest.
Lots of beautiful Victorian houses.
John and I rode the eight mile trail around the perimeter of the Island on the first day-- a really lovely ride despite my many warning cries as people rode or stepped into my path). Delightfully our gray and gloomy day metamorphosed into sunshine and blue skies and away from the Main Street the natural beauty of the island comes through. The next day, we took the island bicycle map and rode nearly every possible road in the interior-- up past the very grand "Grand Hotel" where it costs $10.00 to get entry to the porch and $40.00 for a buffet lunch-- to Arch Rock, West Bluff, Sugarloaf, the beautiful cemetery, the British Landing site-- we saw it all. Tourists are called "fudgies" and we proved the point by purchasing three kinds (to take home to our kids, hah!) and sadly boarded the ferry for our trip back to Mackinaw City and our last night together as a group.
We had a reasonable dinner at a rather fantastic restaurant called "Nonna Lisa". It is supposed to be Italian but the decor is log cabin rustic furnished with scores of stuffed animals. Standard North American forest beasts like moose, deer and wolverines as well as more exotic creatures including lions and tigers. All snarling and snapping in their death throes and not delightful for a "veggie". Still it was fun and slightly nostalgic to know it was our last dinner together-- as always our small group had bonded in the way that ship passengers are said to do. Soon John and I were back in our "Lighthouse Room" at the Lamplighter Motel where we had stayed the second night of our ride and as always early to bed and a good sleep.
In the morning it was pouring and none of us were eager to ride but Mother Nature smiled at us and the rain let up long enough for our ride to the breakfast restaurant. It poured again while we were eating but stopped when we were ready to push off. There had been some debate about the route options. We had ridden to Mac City through the "Tunnel of Trees" but the atmospheric conditions had been so poor that we didn't get the benefit of the scenery. Some wanted to return that same way rather than the shorter and more direct route. John and I chose the latter, however, and off we went only to find that the scenery on that route was truly delightful-- much more appealing to us than the closed in tree route-- lots of open vistas and several significant hills giving us reasonable climbs up and lovely swooping rides down. We also had the fun of meeting a solo cross country rider named Sarah-- we rode with her briefly before she left us in the dust-- despite being heavily loaded with four panniers. Because she took the longer route we met her again while we were lunching in Harbor Springs and we had the fun of being included in her blog http://honoringmycompass.blogspot.com/2013/06/day-29-tree-tunnels-bona-fide-tourists.html.
After lunch we located the correct route along lovely Beach Street that we had missed on the first leg of the trip and soon we were back in Petoskey and at our car. Sadly, except for riding with Susan and seeing Gaylin and Mike who had gotten a ride because Gaylin was suffering from a bad cold, we had ridden out ahead of the others and did not make a proper goodbye. So to make up for it now and for those who have troubled to read this far in my narrative-- here it is. Karen and Suzanne, Jane and Tom, Peggy, Linda, Bob and, of course, Gillian! You were a great group to ride with and we wouldn't have missed it for anything. Safe riding all!
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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