THE MACKINAC BRIDGE--

This dandy bridge, the fifth longest suspension bridge in the World, spans the Mackinac Strait where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron join between the lower and upper peninsulas (UP) of Michigan.  Sue is looking through a pedestal telescope from the southeast side of the bridge in this view as the sun burned off that morning's fog on our way home.

The village of Mackinaw is on the south end and the city of St. Ignace is on the UP end of this huge span.

The bridge, completed in 1957, has a total length of 5 miles.  The distance between her main towers is 3,800 feet.  She weighs 1,024,500 tons.  Can you imagine the size of scale that determined that?

Ships 155 feet tall can squeeze beneath her center span.

We were returning from a whirl-wind 3-day car journey, geocaching from Mansfield to Whitefish Point which pierces Lake Superior in the eastern UP.  The trip was momentous for us; providing our furthest cache North and numerous caches in Canada around the Soo Locks.

That was our second, international geocaching experience, following the Bahamas in early Spring.

Even though I spent the winter of 1958 in the coast guard at Charlevoix, about 40 miles to the Southwest along the Lake Michigan shore, I had never crossed the bridge, visited the Soo Locks or touched Lake Superior.

I satisfied all three of those shortages in one event!

Also, I had never seen the site of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, in Lake Superior about 17 miles off shore while approaching Whitefish Bay.  The Fitzgerald sinking has been burned into the public consciousness by Mr. Lightfoot's song.

Sadly, while I was a raw recruit at the time of my posting to Charlevoix the steamer Carl D. Bradley broke in half and sank about 40 miles off-shore from Charlevoix and we were an extremely busy station handling the search and rescue effort.  33 of her 35 man crew perished in that horrible, November storm.

The Bradley's loss of life exceeded the Fitzgerald's by 4.  May all those sailors continue to rest in peace.

Meanwhile, life goes on as a father watches his son pitch a handful of beach pebbles into the strait while a giant cargo ship makes her way downstream under the bridge, likely headed through Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario then via the St. Lawrence Seaway and out to sea.

Details from the Mackinac Bridge Authority here!