While our adventures on Mackinac Island were definitely fun, on our last day in St. Ignace Michigan we decided to slow things down a bit. The boys had been really excited to go fishing. In fact, our friends son had just gotten a new pole that summer and he was really itching to try it out. I can totally appreciate his enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, I was having a bit of trouble finding a good place for us to go throw a line in the water. I would have preferred somewhere a little more inland, but I wasn't able to find anything within a decent radius of the campground where we were staying.
It's actually a bit disappointing how few fishing piers there are in the little tourist towns like this.
We ended up heading back over to the dock area where some of the ferries leave to head to Mackinac Island. It's part of a small harbor that has a decent sized boat launch for people with personal watercraft. We parked over towards the boat launch area and the boys got started fishing.
I didn't even bother grabbing a pole for myself. After fishing with younger kids a couple of times I have learned it is a lesson in futility to expect to be able to do any fishing yourself. Between putting new worms on the hook and untangling lines, it's a pretty non stop job.
I was content just to sit on the dock and watch the boys throw their lines in the water. This boat launch had enough room that we only had to move a couple of times as boats were coming and going from the harbor. It looked like some other folks had tried to do some early morning fishing, but I wasn't sure if they had any more luck than we did.
It was actually a kind of crappy day for fishing in the harbor. The air was quite cool and there was a wind that kept the skies overcast. I could tell pretty quickly the boys were getting frustrated, but I tried to remind them that even a bad day fishing was better than a day not fishing.
They gave it a good try for about an hour, and then we decided to try and move spots a little bit. As we were walking back towards the parking lot, I noticed something stuck in the ground. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but then it became pretty obvious to me.
As a way to deter waterfowl from nesting and generally messing up the shoreline, they have these predator things that stick in the ground and move around in a sort of lifelike fashion when the wind catches them. I guess they work pretty well because I didn't see a single goose or seagull along the shoreline while we were there.
As we were sitting in the other area, I noticed this police boat that was docked behind a locked gate a short distance around the harbor. I told the boys to go check it out, but not to try and get around the locked gate.
I was torn between whether I should go over there with them or just let them be. I decided to drop the tailgate on my truck to sit and watch them from afar. I had a good vantage point in case anyone tried to mess with them and this allowed them some time to just chat amongst themselves like two old men who have been friends forever.
Fishless and hungry, we decided to head to a local drive in called Clyde's to get lunch and take it back to the campground. Being a Saturday in the middle of summer, they were absolutely packed. We had to wait close to an hour to get our food. There are three Clyde's locations in the upper peninsula of Michigan and this one is always slammed because of their proximity to the Mackinac Bridge.
Later that day, we all decided to hit town one more time to get some ice cream. We found this pretty cool spot in town where they had converted a double decker bus into an ice cream shop. You could actually sit on the top of it and eat your ice cream if you wanted to.
Everyone was quite impressed with the size of their scoops. I got a chocolate malt, and it was very good.
We spent the rest of the night doing one of our favorite activities which if you haven't guessed yet is sitting around the campfire. Although we had other trips planned, this ended up being our last trip together of the summer.
It was shortly after this that our friend @diamonddave went into the hospital, so his family had to cancel their plans with us. He finally got sent home yesterday, but he still has a long road ahead of him in terms of recovery.
Hopefully by next summer he will be feeling well enough to come camping with us again. He missed out on way too many good times this past summer!
