Day 3
Petoskey to Mackinaw City

The next morning we were fed a pancake breakfast prepared by the camp staff.

The cook seems to be enjoying his job of making pancakes.

With breakfasts like these, and prepared by someone else, makes getting up so early not seem so bad.

Our itinerary for the day was to drive north to Mackinaw City; the suggested route was to take Highway 119 through the "Tunnel of Trees" to Cross Plains. This took us through Harbor Springs, which is on a harbor off Little Traverse Bay. Harbor Springs is a beautiful little village with the downtown right off the marina.

Further north is the "Tunnel of Trees", where the highway passes through a densely forested area. Although the route is along the Lake Michigan shore, we usually couldn't see the lake because of the forest. It was a very pretty drive, but it played havoc with my GPS unit; it kept saying, "Lost satellite reception!" and "Recalculating!". The GPS wasn't really needed for navigating, but I enjoy playing with it. Nancy says, "Little boys - little toys, big boys - big toys!".

We stopped for lunch at the Legs Inn in Cross Village. The name comes from the stove legs used as a railing on the second level of the building, not human legs. The restaurant was built by a Polish immigrant, Stanley Smolak, who enlisted the help of local native Americans to construct the building  from locally gathered timber and stones.

Stanley Smolak was a self-trained artist who used tree roots, limbs, and driftwood to carve "fantastical creatures" into the furniture and decorative objects used in the inn.

The menu at the Legs Inn was distinctly Polish; we enjoyed some good Polish sausage and other foods on the terrace with a nice view of Lake Michigan.

The "Village Bear" in Cross Village reminds the visitor that this is the north woods and there are bears "in these parts". One of the other people on the rally saw a black bear cross in front of them not far from Cross Village. We weren't so lucky.

That night we had a catered dinner in the rally building at our campground in Mackinaw city.

Conversing with other Roadtrekkers over dinner is always very enjoyable.

Now don't these look like a bunch of "happy campers.!"