Beaver Island, MI to St. Ignace, MI

We continue north heading toward the Mackinac Bridge.

It is the weekend of the Chicago Yacht Club Race, the annual longest fresh water sailing race and we are fortunate to pass by the lead boat, Eagle One, followed closely by White Hawk. White Hawk ends up clinches the line honors by overtaking Eagle One and finishing 4 minutes sooner. Even though White Hawk crossed the finish line first, they did not win the race. While their elapsed time of sailing the 333 miles is the shortest, their corrected time, which takes into account a handicap calculation, is not. How this is calculated, I do not know.

We see the Mackinac Bridge in the distance.

We pass by the lighthouse greeting us into the harbor at St. Ignace.

As we are waiting for packages to arrive, we will spend several days in St. Ignace. St Ignace was founded by Father James Marquette. Born to a wealthy French family, Marquette, at 17 years old, decided to join the Jesuit order and became a missionary. The Jesuits assigned him to America as a missionary to introduce Catholicism to the Native Americans. In Michigan, he founded St. Ignace, named after St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order. With his charismatic ways, he inspired much loyalty among the Native Americans and learned to speak 6 of their languages. After dying from dysentery at 38 while exploring the Mississippi River, his remains were eventually returned to St. Ignace for proper burial by the Native Americans. Today, home to the headquarters of the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, St Ignace continues to have a high population of Native Americans.

As it is the week after the sailboat race, the marina is quite busy with lots of sailboats pulling into slips and others waiting in que for their turn at the fuel dock.

St. Ignace is mainly a place for tourists to catch a ferry over to Mackinac Island. There are two ferry companies that provide transportation from St. Ignace: Sheplers and Star Line. While they both cost about the same, Starline has the hydro jet boats and these “rock our boat” all day long until service stops in the evening.

While St. Ignace is a starting point to visiting Mackinac Island, they have enough attractions to keep us busy these several days.

They also have the necessary required small town Dollar General store.

We also try out some new food, not Captain Crunch Treats, but… pasties! Pasties are traditional meat pies, an upper peninsula specialty. To us, they taste like shepherd’s pie, but in sandwich form. The gravy, as a side item, is a must as it is a lot of bread.

Since we are docked here for several days, laundry is a must. At $2.00 a wash and dry, its not a bargain, but doesn’t ruffle my feather’s thankfully!

And to top everything off, there are Saturday night fireworks!

We had a nice visit to St. Ignace catching up on cleaning, laundry, repairs and intercepting our mail. Next stop: across the Mackinac Straits to Mackinaw City.