Visit to Mackinac Island MI

This was our second summer trip by car -- no RV.

On Wednesday July 25th we drove to Rogers City in northern Michigan to spend 6 days with Vic's brother and his wife at their summer home on Lake Huron. We took our friend Barb with us.  While there we drove north to Mackinaw City to take the ferry to Mackinac Island for the day.

Mackinac Island is a unique place as there are no cars allowed -- only bicycles or horse and carriage.

View along Main Street

There are many ice cream and fudge shops on Main Street so we stopped to shop along the way.

On our previous trip to Mackinac Island we rented bicycles to travel around the perimeter of the island.  This time we walked the trails across the island and visited many sites we had not seen before.  

We visited the Stuart House Museum which highlighted the history of the fur trade industry on the island. Then passed the cemetery on the trail to Fort Holmes and the lookout point.

The 2 forts on the island are Fort Mackinac (founded in 1780) and Fort Holmes (built in 1812) .

Fort Mackinac

The stairway down the hill from Fort Holmes.

The Grand Hotel, built in 1887, held a special event earlier this year to celebrate 125 years in business. The hotel is a very impressive structure with beautiful gardens.

view of the Grand Hotel from the ferry

Barb on the walkway to the Grand Hotel

Horse and carriage topiary in the Grand Hotel garden

Another view of one of the Grand Hotel gardens

There are many other beautiful hotels and Bed and Breakfast Inns on the island.  All the places had beautiful floral decorations. Here are a couple of examples:

The Lilac Tree Hotel on Main Street.

Metivier Inn  (originally a private residence built in 1877)

There are two remarkable rock formations known as Sugar Loaf and the Arch Rock.

View of Sugar Loaf from Point Lookout

Views of Arch Rock

Finger Lakes in our sportscar

On Friday June 22nd, we joined 60 other members of our Toronto Triumph club in a trip to the Finger Lakes area of New York state.

We own two 1976 Triumph Spitfire sportscars.  We drove our yellow one on this trip.

Highway travel was kept to a minimal. We took mainly scenic country roads. Our trip along Ridge Road from Stoney Creek ON to Niagara Falls provided a beautiful view of the area, especially of many of the wineries in the area.

We spent 4 days based at a hotel in Bath NY.  The first evening we enjoyed dinner at the Bath Golf and Country Club.

Saturday June 23rd we spent most of the morning visiting the Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport at the south end of Keuka Lake.

Statue of the "June Bug" on the lawn of the Curtiss Museum

From there we drove to the Corning Museum in Corning where we met some of our fellow club members for lunch before touring the museum for the afternoon.  At 5 pm we drove to Branchport to board the Esperanza Rose for a dinner cruise of Keuka Lake. 

Sunday June 24th we drove to the Ventosa Winery near Geneva for a winery tour, wine tasting and a buffet lunch.  The building for the winery was located on the top of a hill with beautiful views of the vineyard and Seneca Lake.

View of Seneca lake from the Ventosa Winery

Our car show was held on the lawn of the winery with judging by fellow participants.



In the afternoon we drove to Watkins Glen to shop around town, then we drove to the Watkins Glen International Speedway.  We drove our cars for 3 laps around the speedway.  Unlike our drive on the Mosport International Raceway track were we drove at a slow pace in parade style, at Watkins Glen we followed the pace car at speeds up to 80 mph! 

The following are links to a video of the cars lined up to enter the Watkins Glen race track and a video taken by Bev of our first 2 laps around the track!

Lining Up Before Lapping
Watkins Glen Lapping

Our awards dinner was held at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.  Vic won first place in the Spitfire Class.  All the ladies received a beautiful piece of fused glass artwork from the gift store at Corning Museum.

High Relief Fused Glass artwork by Anne Nye -- perfect decoration for our RV!

Monday June 25th we drove home via a different route to enjoy more of the scenic countryside in the Finger Lakes area.