Day 19 -- All day in Mackinaw City, Michigan -- No miles

Sometimes life surprises a person. When you're pretty sure you know how the future is going to turn out, fate steps in to show you there are lots of other alternatives. Take yesterday. We were pretty sure that our visit to Mackinac Island would knock our socks off. We expected to get to see the Grand Hotel, maybe sit on the veranda. Certainly we expected to enjoy the afternoon tea we'd heard so much about over the years.

But surprise surprise, our preconceived notions about what a visit to the Mackinac Island would entail turned out to be completely wrong. Not only were we afforded only the briefest of glimpses of the Grand Hotel on our carriage ride, but our research told us the afternoon tea was overpriced at $52.00 apiece and the quality was mediocre. This happened on Saturday of Labor Day weekend.

Then along came Sunday morning and the topic of discussion was whether we should just hang out and do nothing except enjoy the quiet of the camp. Concetta suggested that we could do a lot of walking along the beach of Lake Huron and otherwise just take it easy. But I didn't think that I'd be satisfied using up an entire day in Michigan's Upper Peninsula just walking and hanging out. On a hunch I went ahead and packed all the hoses and and other gear and got the rig ready for the road.

At this point Concetta hadn't objected, so once we were ready and everything was squared away, I emailed the camp manager and told him we were leaving but would return to spend our final night. I then handed Concetta a flyer for the Fort de Buade Museum that was devoted to life in colonial times and was purported to be nearby.

Once on the highway, we soon discovered that the GPS had other plans and was intent on sending us to some address roughly two hundred miles away. About this time Concetta researched and discovered that the Fort did not operate on Sundays. So much for that idea. Thankfully, we pulled over and reversed direction before we had gone very far.

Our next plan was to find the "Ice Breakers" museum ship that was near the ferry harbor and was devoted to ice-breaking ships in the Mackinac Channel. Unfortunately, try as we might, we were not successful in finding the museum location, though the road was festooned with lots of signs announcing its presence somewhere ahead. But in our efforts to find the Ice Breaker Ship Museum, we managed to stumble over the Michigan State Historic Park called "Colonial Michilimackinac." Well, we decided, we might as well stop and check it out.

Right away, however, we discovered that other RVs were currently using every RV space near the museum. With a sigh, we turned around and started back down the access road. It was at that point that I happened to glace over as we approached a "T" intersection and saw that the Motel we were passing had a large expanse of grass at the rear of their building and no one appeared to be using it for anything. I noticed that the Motel had very few windows on that side, and what windows existed were tiny and frosted, perhaps bathroom windows.

Throwing caution to the wind, I made a hard left and rolled up on the grass and stopped. We took a few minutes getting ready for our museum visit, but no one appeared to scold us for our choice of parking areas. So, seeing no overt aggression on part of the Motel employees, we locked the door and trekked off to the fort and museum to spend what we thought would be an hour of our time.

As sometimes happens, today turned out to be the day we were hoping for yesterday. Everywhere we went, everyone we talked to, and every situation we encountered was absolutely wonderful. The fort was ably manned with a number of super-friendly and knowledgeable docents who acquainted us with all aspects of living in a frontier settlement and fort. We learned about native American crafts and handiwork, we learned about life in the frontier British army, we learned about blacksmithing, we learned about colonial gardening, we learned about the fur business, we learned about defense weapons, and we learned about fireplace hearth cooking -- naturally a favorite of Concetta's

In short, we learned about every possible facet of surviving in the wilds of the northern frontier beginning in 1715. But did they live so differently then? As it turns out, not so much. As we toured the married officer's quarters we could see that rooms were arranged much as we arrange them today. When we listened to the cook, the items she was preparing for a meal are much the same things Concetta and I eat today: boiled beets, salad with olive oil dressing, homemade bread, and a crepe made with blueberries. The meat dish was rabbit, but I'm sure it tasted just like chicken.

One cooking process I had never seen before. When the cook needed to make a sort of crepe in which to put her warmed blueberries, she swept a couple of scoops of very hot coals out onto the stone hearth in front of the fireplace. When they coals were arranged to her liking, the cook poured an egg batter into a black kettle having small legs on the bottom. Finally she slid the kettle atop the hot coals and sat back to listen to it cook. Note, she didn't watch the crepe cooking, she listened. She told us if she were to hear no sounds coming from the kettle she would guess that the coals had cooled too much.

We had an extensive tour of the various gardens inside the fort. All the various plants were representative of what would have been grown three hundred years ago at the fort. The docent pointed out that as far north as the fort was located there was no possibility of residents being able to count on growing major food stuffs. So things like flour, sugar, and tea had to be brought in by boat. The gardens were predominantly used for producing vegetables like beans, beets and tomatoes, aromatic plants like lavender, and medicinal plants like mint.

We also learned in the cooking lecture that each person at the fort would require a loaf of bread a day, which even when the winter population of the fort dropped to 200 individuals, a huge amount of bread would be needed each day. During the height of the summer trading season, the population in and around the fort usually rose to some 2,000 individuals. Imagine the need for a loaf a day for each one of those residents. And each loaf could only be made in one of three outdoor brick ovens. No indoor ovens attached to the fireplace have been found at the fort so far.

We had a great discussion with the blacksmith, who, when asked about the History Channel program, "Forged in Fire," told us that the program has had an effect on the blacksmithing trade that is both good and bad. He told us that the focus on edged weapons ignores a whole spectrum of other forged goods that were the bread and butter of most frontier blacksmiths. He also told us that the techniques used by the Forged in Fire contestants tend to shortcut tried and true blacksmithing procedures. For instance, he said, the process of "annealing," which is the slow cooling of a piece of forge iron, cannot be used on the TV program as there is insufficient time.

"But," the blacksmith went on, "people used to come by my demonstrations and ask if I made horseshoes. When I told them no, they'd just move on. Now, with the advent of the Forged in Fire program, visitors ask much more in-depth questions that demonstrates that they have acquired a basic understanding of what a blacksmith does. For that I'm grateful."

One fascinating feature of our visit today was learning about a British officer named Arent Schuyler DePeyster. DePeyster was born in New York State, but received his schooling in England. DePeyster became a British military officer best known for his term as commandant of the British controlled Fort Michilimackinac and Fort Detroit during the American Revolution. Following the capture of Lieutenant-Governor General Henry Hamilton, DePeyster is often credited as being the military leader of British and Indian forces in the Western American and Canadian frontiers. We visited DePeyster's home and garden and were impressed with both. Once his military career was ended, DePeyster and his wife retired to Scotland, where his wife had family, and finished out his life writing poetry.

Naturally my favorite part of the day -- and yes, we spent the better part of the whole day at Fort Michilimackinac -- was the arms and armament lectures. I got to see the docents fire a mortar, a cannon, and a Brown Bess, smooth-bore musket which is the weapon most British soldiers carried during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution (photo bottom right). No actual projectiles are used, but the sound those weapons make is substantial. The mortar was perhaps the loudest as it was some minutes before my hearing returned to normal.

And that was our Sunday. We were so much happier in today's environment as the there was never more than perhaps two dozen guests at the fork. The docents were happy to spend the necessary time to answer any and all questions and to talk with us one-on-one. The experience we had today is what we hoped for yesterday and it didn't happen. But we won't be deterred. There's lots of adventures still to come and, who knows, we may still find the Ice Breaker Ship Museum tomorrow. We're not sure if it will be open on Labor Day, but we're willing to find out.

And if you're thinking of hitting the road in hopes of fulfilling your dreams of exploration, The Happy Wanderers wish you happy travels and exciting adventures.