Tourist Trap

Emily Maze

Mackinac Island

8/19/17

            We woke up to a chilly morning, but luckily it warmed up to a beautiful day to be at Mackinac Island. Before boarding the ferry, we learned about the Ojibwa culture and how they were forced to assimilate. On the ferry ride, we got splashed by nice chilly water. When we arrived, we split up to go see what we want. My group, Emma, Ashley, and Chris, browsed some of the tourist sites but realized it would burn a hole in our pockets. We constantly had to play frogger through all the bicycles, horses, and people. I almost got a game over from a kid on a bike while Tracy walked head on into a horse pulling a carriage with her group standing by videotaping her. Disappointed, my group decided to go to a place where we belong. We took our famous Mackinac Island Fudge ice cream to the trails. It was an arduous task climbing a steep hill while licking ice cream. On the way up the hill, a kid asked why there was a fence halfway up with a narrow walkway through it and the mom replied, “It’s there so when you trip and fall and roll down the hill, it’ll stop you.” Along the trails, we saw a rock arch above beautiful water, an 11,000-year-old rock that looked like swiss cheese called sugar loaf rock, and turtle park which sadly didn’t have turtles because it was just a park. While finding our way to the locations, we figured out how to use our compass by matching up the north on the map. Our tummies eventually grumbled so we went in search of hamburgers since we probably won’t get any on ECOEE. After our tummies were full, we decided to be good little students and work on our assignments, such as this journal. Then we headed back to our campground and learned how the other group, Tracy, Julia, Kara, Sean, and Austin, took the long way, 200 plus stairs, to get to the Grand Hotel. This was a fun day off and tonight will be our 2^nd to last night before being in the middle of nowhere.