St. Ignace, Michigan - Our Last Stop on the U.P.

It was tough to leave the scenic beauty and free electric site at Christmas, Michigan, but it's time to head on east across Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We made a two-hour drive to our new home in St. Ignace, stopping at another half-price Passport America campground called Tiki Resort. We had a nice shady site that we enjoyed as we explored our new home town. The first night we took a walk around the bay to see the St. Ignace lighthouse.

We are on the very southeast tip of the Upper Peninsula. In fact, the only way to go further south is to drive across the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge.

We drove to the Bridge View Park to get our first picture of the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere.

This park has educational displays describing the monumental task of building this bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. We read the information boards, but let's face it--they don't photograph well. But those lovely flowers outside are certainly worth a picture!

We also found that our new home town has a national memorial to Father Marquette. A French priest who built several missions in this area during the 1600s, he is probably best known for being the chaplain for the French expedition to explore the new world. When the Captain of the expedition's map was damaged, only Marquette's map was left. So Father Marquette is recognized as the first European to map the lower Mississippi River. We include a picture, but we warned--those educational stops just don't photograph well.

We hiked a couple trails at the national memorial, for more views of the bridge.

We also made a trip to the local visitor center to get some pronunciation information. We see different spellings for different things in this area. But we found from an official source, that they are all pronounced the same--they are all pronounced with the /aw/ sound at the end. So, whether, we are talking about Mackinac Island, or Mackinaw City, or Fort Mackinac, or the Straits of Mackinac, or the Mighty Mackinac Bridge--they are all pronounced the same--like MackinAW.

Speaking of Mackinac Island, that's one of the reasons we are here in St. Ignace. We'll be taking the ferry boat ride to this island tomorrow. So we drove to the boat terminal to buy our tickets tonight. Two companies provide ferries for this short boat ride, and we randomly chose Shepler's. They have a good reputation, and besides, they have beautiful flowers lining their parking lot.

So after a short orientation to our new home town, we're looking forward to exploring more of this area. We think we're going to like it here!