Island of Dreams (Picture Heavy)

Sorry half the pictures are sideways! This is a mess of a post. The pictures were taken in haste, the trip was a complete surprise!

As you know we were on vacation. 7 days into our 10 day trip my power steering went in the car. Then of course once its at the shop they find that the rack and pinion was also bad. Oh, and this is Friday morning at 8 am. So we were without a vehicle until late Monday afternoon. We even had to stay an extra day because of it.

(See the trees, Middle of August) 

Told ya winter is coming early this year!

So since we were just about a block away from the docks. We thought we would go were not having a car wouldn't matter in the slightest! We went to Mackinac Island! Cars have been banned since 1898. That was because the trolley drivers were loosing business to the taxi's. So they approached the powers that be and got cars banned from the island. Grim and I splurged a bit and got a private tour for us and the two monsters! It ended up being a great learning lesson for all of us!

I bet you didn't know but the island was actually the 2nd ever national park! Yep, right after Yosemite national park. It held that distinction for 20 years. Then the government wanted to save money and decided that they didn't want it anymore. The state then asked for it and was able to get it and make it our first state park. Today 80% of the island belongs to the park!

As you can see the weather was perfect. Not to hot but not to chilly either. We all had jackets but as the day wore on we didn't need them. The trip back our shirts were needed. But then they came off again because we no longer had our wonderful traveling companions and had to hoof it out of town back to the campground. Where we were then stranded for 3 days.

The only good part was that there was a grocery store and family dollar only about 2 and 1/2 city blocks away. So you know what we did. Yep, hoofed it to family dollar and bought a cheap backpack, so we could go grocery shopping each day. Just an FYI, the reason we had to do that is because when we took UN-Monster to school the back of my SUV was packed with all her stuff and I crammed what I could into the trailer... It wasn't near enough room or stuff. I had to buy a lot of stuff that we had forgotten to pack!

Yart