Day #7- A Soldier's Coming Home

We finally made it to the island this afternoon, but more about that shortly.  First, our morning...

We like to stay up late and sleep in whenever we can.  Wake up time is 5am on work days, so bedtime is early.  But on weekends and time off, we take advantage of being able to sleep in.  Today, however, we woke up very early for some reason. Maybe it was the bright sun coming into our cottage- it's not dark like hotel rooms.  We started our day by having our coffee on our deck and enjoying the cool morning.  Because we were up early we decided to go down the block for some breakfast.

After stuffing ourselves with way too much food, our plan was to take a short break and then head to the island.  That short rest turned into snoring and drooling for HOURS!  We usually sleep with Loren's sound machine on, so I think maybe the sound of the real waves crashing just magically put us to sleep.  All in all, it worked out because we realized that all of the old folks and families would be headed home for the day while we were just starting out.

We got ready and headed for the ferry.  We got a fast boat this time and made it across the lake very quickly.  We poked around a few stores and then started the long uphill walk to the island cemeteries.  These are the most peaceful places.  One of the cemeteries is for the soldiers who fought at Fort Mackinac.  It's sad to see so many graves for unknown soldiers, but we always pay our respects to them.  We somehow lost hours of time exploring and realized it was after 8:00.  The last boat comes back to the mainland at 10 on weekdays, but we wanted to catch the 9:00.  We stopped at the island bookstore and then ran down the dock and hopped on the boat as the ferry was practically untying the lines.  The ride back was choppy.  The captain said there were 4ft waves.  We were already in the back because we were so late, but people started moving towards the back for a smoother ride.

When we pulled back up to our cottage, there was about 100 Canadian geese on our beach.  There were even some babies who didn't even have their feathers yet.

We walked about 4 miles today around the island, so now we are ready to watch TV and plan our day for tomorrow.  Stay tuned!