2014 Northern Michigan Trip Arriving in Mackinaw City June 25, 2014                                                                              Next Page

View from room 212 at the Riviera Motel in Mackinaw City

Balcony outside room 212 with Mackinac Island, Round Island and Bois Blanc in the distance.

Wednesday

We flew out Wednesday morning with United Airlines, changing planes in Chicago and going on to Flint, where we picked up a rental car for the 3 hour drive north.

Arriving in Mackinaw City in the evening, we immediately went to Darrow's Family Restaurant for supper. It is just a plain restaurant, which was started as a drive-in by the parents of one my classmates when I was three years old. It is run by my classmate today. I had deep fried whitefish and Linda had deep fried perch, both were fresh and perfectly cooked. Darrow's also has good pies, soups and salads, but we settled for the fries and coleslaw which came with fish.

For several years I have been wanting to stay in the second floor end room at the small Riviera Motel. When planning our previous visits, the end rooms were already booked, but when I checked in May, room 212 was available for Wednesday & Thursday nights. The Riviera Motel is just a block and a half from the foot of the five mile long suspension bridge and has the very best view of the Mackinac Bridge from any motel, with this room being the very best. The room itself was nothing special, rather dated and with two double beds that were too firm for Linda to be comfortable.

But the view was all that I expected and my favorite part was waking up in the early morning to use the bathroom and taking photos of the bridge and sunrise from the room before crawling back into bed.

The only down part was the midges. The small, non biting flies have been a growing annoyance near the water in recent years because of their large numbers. They should have been gone long before late June, but the late spring had pushed them back nearly a month. Their numbers slowly dropped during our trip.