July 20, 2010

July 20, 2010

Before leaving Mackinaw City, MI, we stop at Colonial Michilimackinac State Historic Park. It is another fort and Aimee is groaning. I guess she has a right to be, since it is similar to Fort Mackinac we saw on the island yesterday. It should, since this fort was taken apart and transported to the island during the Revolutionary War. Even though a repeat, this fort focuses on the earlier French era and Michigan does a good job with the interpretative staff in period costume. The fort to this day is an archeology site and it is amazing the amount of artifacts that they have found over the years. This fort was built by the French to protect the valuable fir trading business. The residents were apparently pretty wealthy based on the junk thrown away.

The Straits of Mackinaw connect Lake Michigan with Lake Huron. It also separates the two peninsulas of Michigan. We drive over this longest suspension bridge in the western world to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the town of St. Ignace. Our first stop is Father Marquette National Memorial. Unfortunately the New France Discovery Center burned down in 2000 and Michigan hasn’t found the funds to rebuild. We stop anyway and find quite a few interesting interpretative stations about Pere Marquette. Father Marquette was a Jesuit priest who came to the area and built an Indian mission here in 1667. He is most famous for tagging along on a journey of discovery with Louis Joliet. They traveled from here west and down the Mississippi River passing by my hometown. Unfortunate for Joliet, his journal was lost in a shipwreck, so Marquette and his journal got all the credit for the expedition. Marquette is buried here on the site of his yet-to-be-rediscovered mission.