Mackinaw Bridge

Over the Mackinaw Straits between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron lie what was for years the longest suspension bridge in the world, the Mackinaw Bridge.  At about 5 miles long, and over 200 feet above water level at the channel,  it is a tribute to state of the art engineering and construction in the 1950's.

The bridge roadway is held up by vertical cables hanging from the huge cables strung between the towers and large concrete anchor blocks at each edge of deep water.  The main support cables pass through eye bolts on top of each tower without being secured in place, allowing movement to occur as wind and weather demand.  It's said that the roadway has moved 35 feet to one side when the winter winds blow!  The good thing, I guess, is that when it does move to one side it stays there and doesn't sway back and forth like a hammock gone wild! Still, we were happy that it was a mild day across the straits, with only a 5-15 mph wind. The center two lanes of the bridge are made of metal grating, and caused Nessie to jump around a bit, but with a bit on concentration, we made it just fine. Construction on the outside concrete lanes prevented us from consistently driving there.

A quick snap of the cables supporting the roadway.  Not that substantial if you ask me!

All of the weight of the bridge, cables, and vehicles is supported by the suspension cables anchored to the main anchor blocks.  Don't think about that while you're driving across.

The bridge, and the town of Mackinaw City, is only 64 miles south of Soo Michigan, so this officially becomes our shortest move of the summer trip.  We've stopped here because of a recommendation to visit Mackinac Island.  I'm told that even though the two names are spelled differently (-nac and -naw) that the correct pronunciation is "naw". Go figure. Tomorrow we'll take a ferry

to the Island, which is reputed to have more fudge stores per foot than any other place in the state, although our trip through downtown MC this afternoon set the bar pretty high! In one block (downtown is two blocks long) we noticed four restaurants, three hotels, five fudge stores, and a Starbucks!

Along the shore at the northern end of town lies a beautiful state park that encompasses a recreation of the original French fort located in the area, the refurbished Point Mackinac Lighthouse, and the local Visitors Center, which is a building built directly under the approach to the Mackinaw Bridge, so that we could hear the traffic rumbling and rolling just over our heads. Kinda scary!

This sign identifies the park,

I'll leave it to your imagination to pronounce the name…..

The lighthouse staff was just going home for the day, so we were unable to tour the building, but we did take a few photos.

And back to our rv park at the Mackinaw Mill Creek Camp, which is celebrating it's 50th anniversary as a recreational park.  They have a number of cabins for rent as well as hundreds of rv sites, both with and without hookups. Since it's been five days since Donna did laundry, she insisted on full hookups, and I for one am happy with that! With discounts, the cost was less than $30 a night, which is quite a find for a quiet, rustic site with hookups that is just a few steps from Lake Huron!  If we had more time a round of golf on the onsite course would be in order, as well. $25 with cart on a nice course is hard to beat! We're in site 773 (yes, there are that many) and have almost found out how to get to the main road from our site!  The roads wind through hardwood and fir forests so that you almost need a GPS to avoid getting lost.

The temp was predicted to be in the low 50's today, but made it all the way to 59! As you can see, Donna was bundled up with almost every jacket she owns on!  The low tonight is supposed to be in the 40's, so it's warming up.  Yeah!