Cheboygan and Antrim Counties

I left St. Ignace early in the morning and headed back over the Mackinac Bridge. There was some work being done on it which made it a little frightful for me. I had to drive over the dreaded grates. I'm the sort of person who won't walk over grates on sidewalks so it was no fun. But, of course, I eventually got over and to Mackinaw City.

The first thing I look for when I'm going to walk in a city is how far out are their sidewalks. It's a pretty good indicator to me about how committed they are to providing ways to get out and walk or run. Mackinaw City's go WAY out. I parked by the park which is right by Fort Michilimackinac and started walking. It was very early so it was still a little cool. The lake was beautiful. My legs felt pretty good after just walking about 8 miles the day before.

I wish I could remember who this is a statue of. I think it was a white woman who worked at an Indian mission???? I thought it was a pretty neat carving.

There are sidewalks all the way along the lake and through town. This is the Old Mackinac Point Light.

I told Wes I was going to try to take a picture of the sailboat as he traveled under the bridge. But from my vantage point I couldn't tell which sailboat was him. And I think I missed him by about a half hour anyhow. It really is a tremendous sight.

It's weird but I kind of like Mackinaw City better than the island. Don't know why. I was just glad that Cheboygan County was done.

I decided to drive all the way down to Antrim County and see if I could finish that before I had to meet Wes (hopefully) at Petoskey. We kind of kept our fingers crossed about where he'd end up since he hadn't made reservations but it's pretty easy to get docks this year with the gas prices being so high. And I keep my fingers crossed that he won't run into any trouble.

Grass River Natural Area is west of Mancelona in Antrim County. It has a wonderful boardwalk trail through wetlands with signs along the way explaining what you're seeing. The trail goes down to the Grass River at one point.

The water was crystal clear. All kinds of wildlife was flitting and swooping about. The people at the visitor center said that I didn't need to worry about bear that they hadn't seen any scat for about 8 years. And I didn't need to worry about the coyotes or bobcats since they are mostly nocturnal. Okay....Funny that I don't even worry about snakes and I'm really pretty scared of them. The worst thing about it was the flies....lord they're nasty!!!

I wasn't sure why anyone would want to sit on this bench.

The trails were really nice but not very long and the flies were driving me away so I still had about 2.5 miles to get and there weren't really any towns to walk around in. So I started driving up 31 and saw Barnes County Park which was over on Lake Michigan. They had some excellent hiking trails so I hoofed it around there until I was done.

These steps went down to the swimming beach. They have camping at this park. It was pretty nice!

With Antrim County done I headed up to the nearest McDonald's to get on the internet and that's where Wes messaged me that he'd got a slip in Petoskey. It took me a while to get through Charlevoix as they had their Venetian Festival going on right on Lake Charlevoix but I finally made it through.