Our Vacation: Day 1 in Photos

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Day 1
Day 2: Parks
Day 2: Colonial Fort Michilimackinac
Day 2: Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse
Day 2: Dairy Queen, The Campfire, & The Bridge

Last week on Wednesday, the kids and I left the house before 9am. I knew it would be a long ride, and planned a few rest stops along the way. We ended up stopping before I had hopped to, but it was needed. That was just a run of the mill rest stop, nothing special, nor was it worthy of photos.

The second rest stop, which I planned, was at the Michigan Welcome Center, located just north of Clare, on 27. It's got a highway workers memorial, several sculptures, a brochure stand that was just HUGE, a large lighthouse, and more. I got a few photos, we browsed the brochures, then we were on our way again, with a quick snack.

For the next stop, I had planned on making it up to Gaylord for lunch. However, about 25 minutes before we reached it, I had hungry kids, so we stopped quickly in Grayling. I got gas, we got a burger (and ate snacks from the car, and drinks from the car), then we were back on the road.

Those were my only two planned stops. As we got closer to Mackinaw City, we started seeing signs for Sea Shell City, a tourist shop just south of Mackinaw City. I asked the kids if they wanted to stop, and they did. Before we could reach it, though, we found a rest stop that promised a "Scenic Turnout", so we stopped.

It was a hike up a hill, then there was a nice wooden deck over looking the forest around us. It was a nice diversion, and we got to stretch our legs a bit. 10 minutes later, we were pulling into Sea Shell City.

The kids got to pick a small souviner each, before we headed back on the road. By now, we'd made 5 stops, instead of the 2 I had planned. We were behind schedule by quite a bit. I had wanted to arrive around 1, but it was almost 3 before we arrived and were checked into our campground.

The campground itself had some nice amenities- it would have been better, had they all been working. The wifi was down, and the heater for the pool was out of order. The campsite itself, was horrible. It was tiny, and there was no grass- just gravel. The ground under it was sand, so I had a hard time staking the tent and canopy.

I had enough room for the tent and canopy to be side by side. That's how wide the site was. Length wise, I had enough room to park the car in front of the tent, with no room behind it. It was microscopic. But, they did put us in a great location. Directly across from us was a water pump (we didn't have running water at the site, but didn't need it), one of the playgrounds, the shower house, the bathroom house, the pool, the mini golf course, and the camp store.

We were able to see Lake Huron from our site in 1 direction, but later in the week when someone pulled into a camp site over there, it blocked our view completely. We were a 2 minute walk to a sandy beach. On the beach, we had a view of Mackinac Island, but not the bridge.

After we were set up, we went down the coast to Cheyboygan to get groceries. It was torn up, and took me a bit of time to locate it, but we finally found the Walmart. By the time we got back, it was almost 7pm, so I made us each a grilled cheese sandwich.

We walked around to explore, and found the area with the bridge view. I was hoping the lights would be on, but it wasn't dark enough for the bridge to be lit up yet, so we didn't get to see the bridge lit up on Day 1.

By the time we got to bed, we were all tired. I set Nick's laptop up with the movie Prince Caspian, but none of the kids made it through the whole movie. Heck, I didn't, either! I woke up as the credits were rolling.

And, that is how we spent day 1 of our vacation!