I’m not blogging in real time (about 7 weeks delayed), follow us on Instagram to find out where we are currently!

After leaving Interlochen State Park and the Traverse City area we headed north so we could visit Mackinac Island. This place was one of the TOP recommended Michigan spots from friends, family and our readers, so we knew we couldn’t miss it!

Mackinac Island is a small island located in Lake Huron off the northern tip of the “mitten” of Michigan. It has a fascinating history which you can read about here. Today it serves as a resort and tourist destination.

The island can only be reached by boat, ferry, aircraft (and snow machines in the winter over an ice road). You might find it interesting that motorized vehicles are prohibited on the island – that’s right, no cars! You’ll find only bicycles and horse drawn carriages for transportation.

There are a few different ferry companies that will take you from Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island – we recommend taking Star Line Ferry – it’s the ferry we took and we loved it. You can expect to spent between $12 – $23 for a round-trip ferry ticket to the island (after visiting the island I can say it’s totally worth it).

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I’m about a month delayed in blog posts, here are some of our adventures from around August 25, 2015. For real time updates – follow us on Instagram!

After getting our fresh water tank fixed in Grand Rapids we felt like we had a new sense of freedom! We no longer needed a water hook-up which meant we could venture back into the state parks. We immediately headed north to Interlochen State Park. We picked this park because it was close to the popular Traverse City and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore – both were on our list to checkout!

We got to Interlochen State Park on a Saturday and it was packed with locals. But the crowds didn’t bother us – we had been used to those in the private RV parks we’d been staying. I was just happy to be surrounded by mature trees that smelled like NATURE. Ahhh, the stress just melted away.

As soon as we got settled in our spot we had a park employee come by and invite us to a kid’s program down at the camp office. A park volunteer read a book about a lightning bug and then everyone got to make a glow-in-the-dark lightning bug to take home. The parks we’ve visited have had some amazing kid’s programs – all available for free.

While at Interlochen State Park it felt like it was our first chance to slow down and relax. We had been moving so quickly to get to Grand Rapids for the repair appointment that we were excited to spend a solid 5 days in one spot for the first time in awhile. The first couple days we did a lot of homeschool, hiking, grocery shopping and laundry.

After resting up those first couple days we headed to nearby Sleeping Bear Dunes National Shoreline. What an beautiful place this is. Huge hills (bluffs) covered with the softest white sand. It was spectacular to see.

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I’m about a month delayed in blog posts, here are some of our adventures from around August 20, 2015. For real time updates – follow us on Instagram!

After our short stop in South Bend, Indiana to tour the Notre Dame stadium we made it up to Grand Rapids, Michigan for our Airstream water tank repair appointment at Woodland Travel Center on August 20.  After exactly ONE month of a broken water tank (and one faulty repair) the repair appointment was finally here and we couldn’t wait!

The staff at Woodland Travel Center are amazing! They were very accommodating – taking our trailer early in the day in hopes that we’d have the whole thing repaired by the end of business day. When you’re dropping your home off for repairs a one-day repair is helpful so you have your bed back by the time the business day is over, no?!  While they worked on fixing our home we headed into downtown Grand Rapids for a day of exploring!

We stopped at our first ever Tim Horton’s and I got a steaming hot cup of coffee to go – a luxury these days! Then we headed to the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Thanks to our ASTC reciprocal museum membership (we purchased a membership to Museum of the Rockies in Montana) we were able to get into this museum FREE (we have saved so much money with this membership!).

Honesty I didn’t have great expectations for this museum – we picked it because it was free, nearby and activity that would keep us busy while our trailer was being worked on. Boy was I surprised – it was fantastic. If you’re going to be in the area I would definitely recommend checking it out – it’s worth it!

Here are some of my favorite highlight from the Grand Rapids Public Museum:

Life size games in the main corridor of the museum.

Lots of historical displays for the Grand Rapids area. This one cracks me up. I’m sure Liam is just looking at the cool ceiling, but this photo couldn’t be staged any better.

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