Ken's Journal
No. 5 - Summer 2005

Mackinaw City, Mackinac Island, St Ignace, Michigan
June 2-3, 2005 - Days 3-4 on the road. Part III.

One of the "cottages" converted to a B&B with a restaurant/tea-room on the lower level. Colorful!

No bike rack? No Problem! Just drop it where you are. I had lunch here and chatted with the barmaid for a while. I asked where all the hired help lived for the summer. Her and others that work at the restaurant room upstairs from the restaurant - and they have to pay for the lodging too. Where an employer doesn't provide the rooms, the employees have to find their own elsewhere on the island.
In my riding around and over the island, I found "lower-class housing" more toward the middle of the island away from the summer "cottages" of the well-to-do. There are truly two distinct classes of people on the island. This is a similar situation I found when I worked at Rehobeth Beach for the summer one year after my stint in the Army. Behind the vacationers is a virtual army of worker-bees who live in a hidden, unseen culture while the vacationers live it up!

A rank of Cabs for hire!

Worker-bees. All of the horses on the island are worker horses, no pasture ornaments here. Anywhere you'd normally use a a car for transportation or a truck for delivery, here you use a horse-drawn carriage. Need to get luggage from the ferry dock to the hotel? No problem, there will be a horse-drawn wagon to meet you at the dock! Got to get that load of 2x4s to the other end of the island for your little project? No problem, again a horse-drawn wagon comes to your rescue!

My ride back to the main-land.

Leaving the harbor. Remember the "cottage" I pictured in Part II? Well, here it is from the harbor - it's the center one at the top of the picture. Nice view, eh?
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