Day Five - Cheboygan to
Hessel to De Tour Village MI. (Wednesday, August 6)
I made coffee in my trusty 12V. Coffee maker, Juan marginally approves of the
results. Today is Juan's birthday, so we celebrated with PopTarts for breakfast. It's foggy at 7:45 AM, but we finally get
under way. At 10:00 AM we are at the Mackinaw Bridge
Unfortunately we lost one of our disposable cameras, so the Mackinaw Bridge doesn't have
the photo coverage it deserves. Juan drove the boat directly under the center of the
center span of the bridge. We had now made it to three of the five Great
Lakes. Juan driving
It was a little choppy through the Straits of
Mackinac, but once we got back to between Mackinac Island and St. Ignace,
the water was dead flat.
After the tour under the bridge, we reversed course and headed towards
Mackinac Island. Off Mackinac Island we shut the boat down and drifted
while we called the office. Cheryl was in Chicago, so we couldn't contact
her, and Susan wasn't available, but we managed to talk to Juana and Rhonda.
We then cruised across a literally "glass smooth" lake and stopped for brunch in
Hessel.
There was another couple having brunch there, and they were eating absolutely everything,
first
they ordered pancakes, then they ordered hamburgers, then pie, then milkshakes, etc. The woman
said to us "You guys look like you've been on the road for a while". We
told her about our adventure, then she told us their story. This racially mixed couple was
bicycling from Seattle to Philadelphia. Backpack camping along the way. We
thought we were having an adventure until we talked to them. They were going to De Tour
and then taking the ferry to Drummond Island and returning through Canada.
The trip from Hessel to DeTour
Village was beautiful, light breezes, sunshine, and the scenery of the Les Cheneaux
Islands is unbelievable. The passage across the upper edge of Lake Huron was pretty
smooth, but the De Tour Passage lighthouse was a good sight to see.
We met a lot of "strange" characters on the trip; De Tour Village was no
exception. In the first bar we stop at (The DeTour Inn I believe), Juan gets "carded" by the waitress.
(BTW, it was Juan's 33rd. birthday) I ask the waitress, before she sees Juan's
license, "Does he get a free beer if it's his birthday?" she replies,
"Sure, because it's my birthday too." Turns out that there was another patron
celebrating his birthday too. There were only eight of us in the place, three with
the same birthday. We have a hamburger, and a couple of the 22 oz. beers that were
the "special of the day." We then head out back to the marina, but walk
almost past the other bar in De Tour Village. (This bar was later identified as the
Mainsail.) Believe it or not, nearly the same scenario plays out at this bar too, Juan
gets carded, and I ask "Helga" if he gets a free beer on his birthday, she says
yes, and Juan gets the free beer. A licensed embalmer ran this bar. He said
"Bartending and embalming are the same, just the patrons are different."
