St. Ignace's flowers and lighthouse

St. Ignace, Michigan, is on the northern side of the Mackinac Bridge, so we checked out a few things there before heading over to Mackinaw City.  In addition to the Bridge View Park, where we learned about the history and building of the Mackinac Bridge, we went to Straits State Park for additional views of the bridge and the straits of Michigan.  We included bridge photos in our last post.

We saw these happy flowers at the Straits State Park.

These are different than the previous ones.

This was the happiest of them all!

And this yellow one just had to be noticed!

We then drove about a mile to the Wawatam Lighthouse Park where the city's lighthouse is.  It's a nice park with things to do for kids, beautiful flowers, and a boardwalk that takes you to the lighthouse for good views.  Of course the midges were bad there, so you'll probably see some in our pictures.  It was worth the time to go see it before heading across the bridge.

I thought this bike rack was cool.

The park had several beautiful flower beds.

Of course the midges had to be in the flowers, too.

There were so many purple flowers in bloom this spring!

The park has a sundial you can stand on and your shadow points to the time.

The boardwalk to the lighthouse.

The lighthouse

A closer view of the lighthouse.  We were swatting midges constantly just trying to get a photo.

There was a gas station by the Wawatam Lighthouse Park, so we filled up before crossing the bridge and also cleaned the windshield.  We think love-bug season is bad in Florida; the midges were worse!  Thankfully most of the gas stations we used during our trip have had good windshield cleaners.  Or else we've had heavy enough rains overnight that have power-washed the bugs off.  #bugsdon'tmakemehappy.

~ Cindy D.