God Bless America

Sometime after my last post (ok about 2 months after), Spring began in Ann Arbor. I guess I didn't feel much like writing blogs when I could actually go outside without freezing my tail off. The summer was a good one, the highlight as usual being my favorite holiday, the 4th of July. I went to Mackinac Island (in Northern Michigan) to celebrate, and it was a great place to be for the Fourth. The largest attraction on the island, other than a large and very fancy hotel, is a colonial war fort, Fort Mackinac. A few pics from that weekend...



Directly in front of Fort Mackinac is a large grassy park area where people could just sit and relax, play frisbee, sunbathe, read, or in my case, work on a remarkable sunBURN (of course unintentional). This was a view from that park, looking out over the marina into Lake Superior. Mackinac Island is located in the Mackinac Straits, which connect Lake Superior to Lake Michigan (I think). I don't have a picture, but you can also see the Mackinac Bridge from the island. I think it is the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere.



Another interesting aspect of the island is that there are no motorized vehicles (with the exception of a firetruck and an ambulance). Everyone gets around by waking, biking, or riding horses or horse-drawn carriages. I snapped this photo of "Mackinac traffic" one afternoon:

By far the most popular souvenir from Mackinac Island is fudge. And for people like myself who don't want to buy the fudge, a popular pasttime is walking around and getting fudge samples from the oodles of fudge shops up and down the main drag. I particularly enjoyed this partriotic fudge arrangement in one of the shop windows:

Boat all decked out for the Fourth:

All in all, despite the unexpected and unfortunate sunburn I got, I really enjoyed the weekend at Mackinac Island. On Sunday before taking a ferry back to the mainland, we spent about 4 hours watching the Wimbledon final between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer. Wow, that was a great match and perfect ending to a very relaxing and fun vacation weekend.