Day Eight-- Mackinac island

This morning I got up early and went down to the exercise room by the pool for about 50 min so I don't feel so guilty about what I've been eating (although we've only been eating breakfast and dinner with nothing inbetween...). Then, breakfast again! Today I ordered an omelet that came with sausage and really good potato hashbrown casserole. Yesterday, I had mango juice to today I had pineapple.

After breakfast, we ordered a private carriage with the concierge and went on a ride up to Sugar Loaf-- a rock that the Indians considered sacred and why the island was a sacred place where they came to pray. On the side of the rock you can see the face of an Indian. The legend says that the Indian prayed to the gods to be made immortal and live forever, so he was turned into stone and now he is immortal. Moral: be careful what you wish for because you just might get it! Our guide was pretty interesting telling us about how to train a horse where to pee and how to get it to pee on command (Anytime it goes to pee you make a certain sound and after lots of repetitions of making the sound while he pees, you can eventually make the sound and he'll pee wherever he is.).

When we got back, I wanted to walk up the street next to the Grand and look at the summer cottages on the West Bluff. They are pretty much amazingly beautiful houses that are only open from May to October and are worth multi-millions. We got some great pictures looking at the Mackinac Bridge and the waters. When we were coming back down the hill by the houses, I was taking pictures of this one yard that was amazing and a man walked up and asked if I wanted to go inside to take pictures. He was an older gentleman and I asked if he owned it, he said yes, opened and gate and we evetually got a tour not only of the yard, but also the house and his carriage houses. OH MY WORD! AMAZING!!!! The house has been featured on HGTV on a show about streets with amazing houses and they highlight three of them and their house got the biggest segment apparently. It was in the Victorian Houses magazine and Elegant Houses magazine as well as the Reader's Digest. The carriage collection is the biggest on the Island with carriages that were original Chrystler (before he made cars) and Studebaker (apparenlty an early car company, too). He has one from Paris and an old English hunting carriage. This guy is from New Orleans and just comes up here for summers but he also has a house in the Virgin Islands. He got the house from his dad and his dad bought it for $13,000 in 1952. Now it's worth over $2 million. Talk about appreciation!

After that fabulous tour, we came back and G'ma was all tuckered out (she is 79) and so I brought my computer out onto the front veranda and she took a nap. It's fun sitting out here because it overlooks the water (there are trees inbetween), you can see the pool, the front driveway where all the horse carriages come to pick people up and ones that drive through on tours to see the Hotel, and watch all the people who come up to take pictures, sit, and just enjoy the 70 degree breezey sunny day!

G'ma still wasn't feeling well so I went for a walk by myself for a while. I left the Grand, went down to the next street and down to the water. I walked on the path right next to the Straits for a while-- until it become Main Street again. Then, I picked up some fudge from Murdick's, found the magazine G'ma wanted of the house we saw, took pictures of people that asked me to help them out, and went down Main further than I had before. It was such a gorgeous day and I thoroughly enjoyed being outside and feeling like I was on a movie set. I mean seriously, there are no cars, everyone rides bikes or horses, walks or has a carriage. There are lilacs and other flowers everywhere and everyone is happy and smiling. This can't be real life!

When I got back up to the Grand, it was dress code time and almost dinner. For dinner today I had a mushroom crepe type thing as an appetizer, potato soup, no salad (I don't like Caesar), stuffed chicken with Jasmine rice, and finally chocolate chip creme brulee. Once again, quite quite fabulous! We had the same server again, Kevin, that we've had every meal but one since Sunday. We had our picture taken with him just for fun. It's sort of a tradition to take a picture with your favorite server(s) on your last dinner here.

After dinner (after 8pm) we repacked and talked about tomorrow's plans. I uploaded all my pictures from the last two days.

Tomorrow morning we will have our luggage taken to the dock for us and we'll go back over to the mainland.