Great Vacations = Great Memories Part 4 the final one!

So waking up Friday morning on June 10th, ready for our final day in the great Northern Michigan. Now I'm thinking how I'm going to go about getting ready doing my therapy and packing up, deciding whether I would do my therapy first pack that up, and then get ready or get myself all ready go eat breakfast and do my therapy and head out. Well I have to admit in the midst of all this packing and deciding, I forgot to tell Brad Happy Birthday. Now I did not forget it was his Birthday, it was the last thing on my mind before I went to bed and the first thing when I got up, but then my brain started working overtime on the days events and it slipped my mind. His phone kept going off and it was bugging me, and I said "Who keeps texting you?" and he said "It's my facebook, you know for my birthday, did you forget!?" And then I felt horrible and got slack for it the rest of the day from him and Colton, I deserved it I guess. We got ready, ate breakfast, and I did my therapy last. Packed up, checked out, and headed out to the first thing on our list to do before we headed home.



The Mackinac Ice Breaker Museum. She was the great Ice breaker of her century. Measuring 290 feet long the Mackinac was built in Toledo, Ohio and commissioned in December, 1944 and decommissioned June 10, 2006. We just happen to be there on June 10th, 2011, 5 years after it was decommissioned, I thought that was neat. It is a really cool tour they give you with a retired Coast guard member giving you all the neat info about the ship and her history. Very well done, kid friendly, not boring at all.





We next headed to Old Mackinaw Point Light House. There is also a fog station right next to the lighthouse. The fog station was actually built first in 1890, then the lighthouse was funded and built in 1892. The lighthouse was used for 65 years, but was deactivated after the completion of the Mackinac Bridge in 1957. There was no use for the light anymore because the bridge has lights on it at night. It's all a museum now, the fog house is a gift shop and entry for the light house tours, the barn/garage has a map and a short video about shipwrecks in the straits of Mackinac and the keepers house and light house tour are set up with the things and furniture they would have with fascinating information everywhere! You also can climb 62 steps up into the lighthouse to see from the top where the light lens would be (it's on display in the keepers house now). We climbed up it, but I forgot my camera so I have no pictures from there or the inside of the house.



I needed to do some more souvenir shopping so we headed down to Mackinaw Crossings Mall, which is basically a huge stripe mall with lots of interesting stores. I only ended up getting some fudge for my Dad, and some popcorn from the popcorn factory. But we decided to get lunch at one of the Pizza Parlor's before heading home. Lunch was good and we were all ready to take the long drive home, thoroughly exhausted, but also thoroughly pleased with our fun family vacation! Colton was so exhausted, he fell asleep almost before we even got out of town and slept all the way home, 3 plus hours with 2 stops. He woke up just before we turned onto our road.