In a couple hours we will be returning from a weekend at Mackinac Island. I leared two things here at a minimum this weekend.
Athough this is my third visit to the Island since the 1960’s I only just learned that I’ve been pronouncing the Island’s name wrong for forty years. Its not MackinAK its MackinAW like the straights which carried a couple lakers past the Island while we were here.
Because I missed the first two episodes of the PBS series on National Parks I did not know that Mackinac was the second National Park after Yosemite. It didn’t last long, about a decade, before the Feds gave the park back to Michigan so that it could become the state’s first state park.
One thing I recalled from my first visit to the Island turned out to be true. This is the location where the medical world learned all about digestion when the local post surgeon (It was an island fortress for a century) studied the stomach of an unfortunate who was shot in the gut. The hole never healed over and the doctor kept putting undigested meat on a string to lower into the the stomach to see what would happen.
This was my first overnight visit to the Island – three nights actually – and we are set to leave shortly. It was also the first time I bicycled to the top of the Island to look around. There had been a downpour early that morning and the well road appled lanes weren’t completely dry. We showered after getting back to our hotel room!
It was cloudy and muggy on Saturday but Sunday was a glorious day. We hiked up past the Governor’s mansion. Evidently it the governor’s official home away from official home and spend four hours at the Fort – just the two of us. It was nice not being in a rush on such a clear blue day. The views from every angle were supreme. At noon we decided to have lunch at the tea room and I regretted not getting a picture of our waiter who carried out sandwich tray to us on his head. He was the only server who did this but I noted he was more traditional when it came to carrying liquid provisions.
We tarried and I ordered dessert just to stay under the yellow umbrellas and gaze out at Lake’s Huron and Michigan. I took lots of pictures. When our tour was over we strolled back down to our hotel and sat on the porch reading with a warm sun on our feet and the sound of clip clopping carriages drifting up from the main drag below.
I’ve got through a couple more chapters of that Lincoln bio about Abe as a writer. They covered the period of time from Abe the washed up politician to his reemergence as a man to be reckoned with. That’s an inspiring bit of history for to keep in mind as I face the last two weeks of what could be my last election campaign. The opposition paper’s called Abe Lincoln a “black republican.” I wonder what they’ll call me?
