September 1, 2008: Mackinaw City and Beaver Island

We decided to celebrate our Labor Day with a local custom and joined around 30,000 walkers who were
trekking across the bridge that links the upper part of Michigan to the lower peninsula. It was the first time I have seen a sunrise in a long time! Today was the 50th anniversary walk across the Mackinac Bridge and it is the only day of the year that pedestrians are allowed on the bridge. The bridge was built in 1957 and until 1998, at five miles long it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Prior to that there was a ferry that connected the north to the south, and travelers often waited as long as 10 hours for transit during deer hunting season.

The Labor Day walk started on the north end of the bridge, so they had a stream of 100 school busses borrowed from local counties shuttling people to the starting point on the north end of the bridge. They had blocked off two lanes for walkers and the other two lanes allowed traffic both ways. We heard that the busses began moving people at 5:30 AM, but opted to go down at 7:00 AM to begin our day. They had an excellent operation, and even though we waited in line for an hour, the line moved continuously, and they split the line into 6 lines and loaded 6 busses simultaneously. It has been a long time since I have ridden on a school bus. The bus driver told us that he had been by the inspection station at 4:00 AM to have the bus checked by security (bomb check) before loading up passengers.

By 8:30 AM, we had reached the starting point of the walk. The weather was perfect for the walk, with the bright sunshine and cool breeze. From the bridge, you could see the sun sparking on the water and the undulating

pattern of the boat wakes where people were watching the walk from the water. We could even see a brightly colored red and yellow parasail in the distance which seemed low to the water from our position 134 feet above the surface.

There were National Guard troops in green camouflage standing all along the way, and sheriff

’s vessels circled the bridge below for security. We walked over interesting interlocking metal teeth in the bridge which we assumed were joints for expansion when the bridge freezes. As for walkers, most were like us, families of people walking together in shorts and tennis shoes. Ages ranged from infants to the elders walking with canes or riding in wheel chairs. We did see a man in moose costume (man, he must have been hot) and also someone wearing a cheese head. We completed the official walk at the finish line, but still had a mile to go to get back to the marina. Needless to say, we were all pretty worn out, and glad to get back for some clam chowder and sandwiches.

The kids needed to get on the road for their trip home, and headed out of the parking lot just about 1:00 PM. Julie Anna encouraged me to continue the blog saying that even if a lot of our doings were become routine to us, they were interesting to friends at home. Tom must have overheard that conversation, because he never let’s things get routine.

Even though we were pretty tired from our mornings 6 mile walk, we decided to head on out to Beaver Island for the night. We topped off our water tank and noted that we still have ¼ tank of fuel, then cast off and headed under the bridge. The weather was beautiful, and we cruised off towards what is called The Emerald Island of Michigan. We were interested in whether there was any similarity to our own favorite Emerald Isle of North Carolina! We navigated through the shoals noticing how very well the giant light houses marked the way. Suddenly, Tom noticed that our fuel gauges were reading zero and we immediately began to think though the ramifications of running out of fuel where we were. We were not sure if the gauges were correct, but the first action was to drop our speed down to a crawl to conserve fuel. Next he decided to turn off one engine and we rode for a while just on one. We had just come through some very deep water to near the lighthouse where the depth reading was 47 feet when we decided to cut the engine and drop anchor. Luckily, with the weather being good, we would be OK. It was now about 5:30 PM.

Then we called Boat US, one of the rescue companies where we have a membership. We were able to reach them by cell phone, only to discover that the only service boat they had was already out on a mission to retrieve a large sailboat. Their destination was Charlevoix about 40 miles away. He said it would be 5 hours before he would be able to finish and to come to us. Next we called SeaTow, the other sea rescue organization only to find that they did not provide any service near us. They were kind enough call the Beaver Island Marina, but the marina said they had no one who could bring us fuel. SeaTow offered to reimburse us for the expense of finding someone to actually come to our aid, if we could find someone. Our cell phone coverage was very poor, so finally, feeling a little sheepish, we decided to call the US Coast Guard on the VHF radio. The Coast Guard station in Sault Ste Marie heard us and we discussed our GPS location and exact circumstances. Since we were not in any immediate danger, they put out a call of a vessel needing assistance for us. The Coast Guard has a humongous tower so their line of sight reach expands for miles. The sheriff on Beaver Island picked up the call and told the Coast Guard he could get to us in 30 minutes – a message that the Coast Guard relayed to us. We could hear conversations between the Coast Guard and the Beaver Island Water Rescue team as we watched the sun setting into the lake. An hour later we were very glad to see the sheriff’s 20 foot skiff approaching. They told us that they delay was that they had to go several places to get enough 5 gallon cans that didn’t have gasoline in them to bring us 30 gallons of diesel fuel. So there we were tied to the bobbing rescue boat with Tom standing on our swim platform pouring fuel into the tank. He said “No Problem!” Now fueled with 30 gallons in the port tank, we cranked that engine and followed the rescue team’s stern light into the darkness. It was almost 11:00 PM when we arrived at Beaver Island Marina. We managed to also crank the starboard engine to simplify navigating stern first into a narrow slip at the Beaver Island marina. Wow, this was a long day.