Friday, 7/14, St. Ignace (day before check-in)

Statue of Father Jacques Marquette, who established a mission in St. Ignace in 1671. The woman speaking is a tour guide who, along with her husband, told stories of the voyageurs, hardy souls who helped move freight across land and water. Also on this site is the Ojibwe Museum, in the church house built in 1837. On Friday evenings Ojibwe elders hold  welcoming ceremony here in Marquette Park.

Trinity Episcopal Church on Mackinac Island. I sat in here for awhile to escape all the tourists and read some psalms from the Book of Common Prayer. Our parents took us to an Episcopalian Church but I never paid attention to the Psalms or the service.  I liked this one, Psalm 10, here in the 1789 version; it seems to apply to alot we see in the world today:

Psalm 10. Ut quid, Domine ?

WHY standest thou so far off, O LORD, * and hidest thy face in the needful time of trouble?
2 The ungodly, for his own lust, doth persecute the poor: * let them be taken in the crafty wiliness that they have imagined.
3 For the ungodly hath made boast of his own heart’s desire, * and speaketh good of the covetous, whom the LORD abhorreth.
4 The ungodly is so proud, that he careth not for God, * neither is God in all his thoughts.

5 His ways are alway¹ grievous; * thy judgments are far above out of his sight, and therefore defieth he all his enemies.
6 For he hath said in his heart, Tush, I shall never be cast down, * there shall no harm happen unto me.
7 His mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and fraud; * under his tongue is ungodliness and vanity.
8 He sitteth lurking in the thievish corners of the streets, * and privily in his lurking dens doth he murder the innocent; his eyes are set against the poor.
9 For he lieth waiting secretly; even as a lion lurketh he in his den, * that he may ravish the poor.
10 He doth ravish the poor, * when he getteth him into his net.
11 He falleth down, and humbleth himself, * that the congregation of the poor may fall into the hands of his captains.
12 He hath said in his heart, Tush, God hath forgotten; * he hideth away his face, and he will never see it.
13 Arise, O LORD God, and lift up thine hand; * forget not the poor.
14 Wherefore should the wicked blaspheme God, * while he doth say in his heart, Tush, thou God carest not for it? ¹ always in the English Book     15 Surely thou hast seen it; * for thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong, that thou mayest take the matter into thy hand.
16 The poor committeth himself unto thee; * for thou art the helper of the friendless.
17 Break thou the power of the ungodly and malicious; * search out his ungodliness, until thou find none.
18 The LORD is King for ever and ever, * and the heathen are perished out of the land.
19 LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the poor; * thou preparest their heart, and thine ear hearkeneth²;
20 To help the fatherless and poor unto their right, * that the man of the earth be no more exalted against them.

View from Manitou trail on Mackinac

Ravens taking a dust bath

Saturday, 7/14

Mackinac Bridge

Liz and me at Arch Rock, Makinac

Liz at dinner (where they had a great whitefish sandwich and homemade fries)

Sunday, 7/15, to DeTour

Liz on the road

Frank helps Kate with injured toe

Tuesday & Wednesday, Sault Ste. Marie

Liz and me on Whitefish Island

Beaver dams on Whitefish Island, International Bridge in background

West Pier Drive In, where they had the best hamburgers and a great crew working.

At dinner by the locks with Alan, Jan, Scott, Jill, Liz

Ship through the lock

Thursday, 7/19, from Sault Ste. Marie to Paradise

Breaking camp

Dancing Crane Coffee House, a 60s throw-back where Canned Heat was on the stereo when I went in for a coffee

Liz and Scott

On the road to Paradise.

After Paradise we rode to Newberry on Friday, our last night of camping before our final ride back to St. Ignace on Saturday. In Newberry I went to the ice cream shop and got myself a huge root beer float before going back to camp and to bed. As I sat on a bench outside the shop, and while walking back to camp, I spoke with a man whose name I forget, but he told me of his youth (he is 79-years-old, on the ride with his son), when he was 18 and newly married and working as a fireman on the railroad! Literally a fire-man, he had to keep the fires burning in the engine to run the steam-powered engines. He loved that work, the physicality of it, the sounds of the railroad, the engines, the steam. When he had more children, though, he took a job at General Motors and worked on an assembly line until his retirement. He didn’t like the work, but is enjoying retirement now. He is one of the few people I have met who have truly retired and still have a decent income from their former jobs. He enjoys his life now. But he does love to reminisce about the railroad.