We left the island, and headed for the city. Mackinaw City reminds me a bit of Geneva on the Lake, for the cheesiness of it. That is not a bad thing, just a lot of mini golf, candy and ice cream shops, restaurants. and of course the brewery and distilleries we found.
Coming across from the island, it is only a 7 mile trip. We made it in a little over an hour. The weather was good, a bit windy, but the real grind came dealing with all of the ferry traffic. Ferries were coming and going in every direction. The wakes caused by these boats were something we had to be aware of and anticipate.
Once we got to the dock, we found our slip and got tied up. Lauren needed to do some laundry, and I had mechanical stuff to do. It is amazing the difference of the facilities we’ve come across. Some are newer and super clean, some older and well used. Even laundry has been up and down: anywhere from $1.00 to $3.50! For one load, not including drying!
Now that we were done with our chores, we took the bikes out to explore. We rode around the town and made mental notes of where things were and what we wanted to do while we were here. It was a brewery at the top of our list of ‘thing to see’!
We stopped in and had a pint, and was chatting with the bartender, who also told us of a couple of distilleries in the area. Now we’re talking! She directed us to a town center, which had live music, shops, wine tasting room, and the distilleries. We went to the first one and had a flight. We went to the second one, and had a flight. Now we’ve had several tastes of rum, whiskey, bourbon and vodka. Yay! We ended up buying a bottle of bloody mary mix from one of the distilleries- we were drunk and it tasted so good. It still tasted good the following days when we drank bloody mary’s!
We made our way back to the boat and had dinner. Fireworks started around 10:30, and we sat on the back deck, watching the display. Frank wasn’t so impressed as he doesn’t like the loud booms that go with them, and they were being shot off fairly close. He huddled between us and waited for them to end. Once finished, we retired for the evening and prepared for another long travel day as we had chosen Beaver Island for our next stop, which is about 40 miles away.