Instead of giving gifts for holidays, Brad and I made the decision early on in our marriage to go on a trip each year to commemorate our anniversary. We are more into making memories as a family instead of giving each other material things. It's been something really special to look forward to each year and gives us a bit of a refresher when another year of marriage comes around. For our third year anniversary, we picked the sweetest island town in northern Michigan called Mackinac Island. Seriously...there is cuteness and fudge shops around every corner. I had never heard of it before, but somehow we found out about it after we moved to Indiana and knew we had to make the drive.
There are no cars on the island (my favorite part!), so travel is done the ol' fashioned way -- biking, walking, or riding in horse drawn carriages. Like I said....the cuteness is overwhelming! You have to take a large ferry from the mainland in order to get to the city itself and Pier has been obsessed with boats ever since we arrived. "I see boat?" is an interrogative toddler sentence we hear often.
We when we about to board the ferry, the wind and waves were roughhhhhh. The boat was rocking quite a bit more than my liking and Brad and I were both sea-sick by the time we got to Mackinac. But I was in Mackinac Island! I'd been dreaming about this trip for months! Nothing could rain on my parade!
Remember there are no cars on the island? We decided to make the trek to our bed & breakfast carrying all our bags + toddler + stroller + pregnant me instead of hailing a carriage taxi. We knew our hotel was directly next to a church, and we saw a steeple in the distance, we figured that's where we needed to go. Well, it was the wrong church. And the wrong church just so happened to be sitting on a massive hill. And said massive hill was extremely difficult for pregnant Emily to climb. And upon realizing it was the wrong church, the heaven's opened and it began to DOWN. POUR. And Pier didn't like that so he started screaming. And then we were soaked and shivering, because we're in northern Michigan and it was like 40 degrees. And on top of it all, we were officially lost.
Greattt start to our relaxing island getaway am I right. It all ended on a happy note...Some sweet locals took pity on that poor sight (us) and called a horse taxi for us to go to our hotel. We arrived in one piece and added it to our "making family memories" mental scrapbook.
We've taken so many photos of this place already, I decided to break it up into two blog posts so I don't overwhelm you with info-photo-overload. The first place we visited was a butterfly garden located right behind our b&b. I was in heaven! It was the perfect kid-friendly place to start off our trip. There are also lots of scenic nature trails you can hike along throughout the island. Hiking is a big family favorite, so you bet we soaked up all those breath-taking harbor views.
Stay tuned for part two!