Michigan Trip, Day 2

On Day 2 of our trip, we got up in the morning and headed straight to Oswald's Bear Ranch, which was only about 15 minutes from our hotel. The Bear Ranch was similar to the zoo the day before, but it was only bears, obviously. (We had considered going to the Pictured Rocks, which I remember from Ellen's and my trips to the U.P. with my grandma, but we didn't think Claire would make it through the three-hour boat ride.)

Despite the Bear Ranch's similarities to the zoo, we had a great time there. First of all, I guess bears don't smell as bad as some other animals, and apparently they don't attract the same concentration of flies, so that alone made it a much happier place for Elsa. These bears have huge, very wild enclosures, and there are paths around the enclosures for the visitors. There was one enclosure that was so large, it took us 15 minutes to walk all the way around it and we didn't even see all of the bears. So the bears at Oswald seem to have it pretty good, as far as captive bears go.

Visitors can buy bags of apple chunks to toss over the fence for the bears. The minute the bears see you with one of those bags, they'll come right up to the fence, in hopes that you'll give them a treat. In fact, some of them were show-offs—we saw one bear who was sitting upright with his back against a tree, looking exactly like a gigantic, real-life Winnie the Pooh. (I tried to get a picture of him, but somebody else tossed him an apple right then, so he moved.)

There were also places where you could stand on a raised platform and toss the apple chunks down to the bears. If too much time passed between apple tosses, the bears would come over and stand on their hind legs, like this, begging for food.

We could also throw the apples into the pond/waterfall area, and they would wade into the water for them or even climb the waterfall.

There were also some incredibly adorable cubs, like this little guy.

For $5 extra, we all got to go into the cubs' cage and get our picture taken with one of them. This cub sat in a lawn chair like a little teddy bear and ate fruit loops right out of our hands! (I have no idea why this picture was so washed out—I think the guy who took the picture put my camera on a weird setting or something.)

Our main souvenir from the trip came from the Bear Ranch, where Elsa and Claire picked out identical stuffed bears. Elsa named hers "Huggy" and Claire named hers "Tico" (presumably after Tico the Squirrel from Dora). This is the first time Claire has given a real name to one of her animals.

After the bear ranch, we went on to Tahquamenon Falls, another place I remember from my childhood camping trips to the U.P. with Grandma and Grandpa Baldwin.

I did not recall all the stairs leading to the viewing area, which of course wasn't ideal with Claire! But Daddy got his workout.

And the girls loved seeing the falls. Tico enjoyed it as well.

It's a very pretty walk through the woods to get to those stairs leading down. Trees weren't something I really appreciated when I was last here at age, what, 8? But at age 36, I found the huge hemlock trees really beautiful.

And unbelievably old! This one had been cut down, so they set it up as a "History Hemlock" display. You can click on the photo to make it bigger and read about everything this hemlock lived through. (Elsa and Claire are sitting on this stump in the photo above.)

After Tahquamenon, we had hoped to get some lunch and then head down to Mackinac City. But I was surprised to find that there really is nothing around the falls. We seemed to go from national forest to state park to yet another national forest. When you're driving from Wisconsin to the bridge, it seems like the closer you get to the bridge, the less civilization there is. That's the opposite of what I would have expected. But I suppose it makes sense—the bridge didn't open until 1957, so until then, this must have been quite an isolated area. At any rate, we drove and drove and finally found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served us burgers that tasted like saw-dust, then we high-tailed it for cosmopolitan Mackinac City.

We had been undecided about what to do next, since it isn't cheap to stay on Mackinac Island, and with Claire still napping, it would have been difficult to go to the island just for the day. We finally decided to go ahead and stay on the island for two nights. So when we got to Mackinac City, we hopped right onto a ferry and headed over.

The ferries run about every half an hour and it's about a 20-minute boat ride. We sat up on top and watched the island approach (although it was a windy ride!)

Next up: Exploring the island!