Great Lakes Road Trip Day 4 Part 2; Mackinac Island and M-185

As I stated in the previous post I was due for the 8:20 AM boat out of St. Ignace to Mackinac Island. I'm really finding it to my advantage to get up early since nobody really wants to get moving in Michigan before 9 AM. I figured that I would get a lap of the island in on a bike along M-185 before the crowds showed up. The boat rides to Mackinac are only a couple minutes and land on the shore in the city of Mackinac Island.

I grabbed a 7-speed bike near the ferry dock and got started on M-185 traveling island counter-clockwise. M-185 is a state highway maintained solely for non-motorized traffic and is primarily known as a bike route. M-185 is approximately eight miles in length and only has two shields; one in each direction next to Marquette Park. M-185 is known as Main Street in the city of Mackinac Island and Lake Shore Road around the rest of the island. The road that became M-185 was built from 1900 to 1910 and was assigned a trunkline number in 1933. M-185 is open to emergency vehicles but otherwise motorized traffic is completely prohibited. My bike sucked (it kept dropping 6th gear) but it did give me some extra speed over the single-speed cruisers, I've done a distance biking in my time and slow wasn't coming to cut it.

What is now Mackinac Island State Park was originally the second National Park after Yellowstone. Mackinac Island National Park was in place from 1875 to 1895 when it was transferred back to the state of Michigan. Really with the volume of things to do on the island and all the history it is no wonder to me that it was one of the first National Parks. I went to; Arch Rock, Fort Holmes, Fort Mackinac, The Grand Hotel, and cruised the city to find ice cream before departing for the day. Supposedly I got 5.6 miles of hiking in through the core of the island after I dropped off the bike.

Had a hell of a view from the hotel room to enjoy the rest of the night as I was editing photos.

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove

Gribblenation

Search This Blog