Day 2 - Toledo, OH to Paradise, MI

Woke up to chilly temperatures this morning and was looking for it to warm up as I headed north, but instead I got some rain showers heading into Flint!  I missed most of the initial rain with a fortuitously timed coffee stop at Tim Horton's but I ran into it again through Saginaw.  Nothing too heavy, but it kept the chill around for a while.  My first sightseeing stop of the day was in Mackinaw City, prior to crossing the Mackinac Bridge.  I took a few minutes to walk around Michilimackinac State Park, view the bridge and Mackinac Island, and look over the Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, which was first lit in 1892 to help guide ships safely through the Straits of Mackinac, the narrow shipping lane that connects Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.  By then the skies had cleared and it was beautifully sunny and much warmer than it had been earlier.

But my main destination was still about 90 miles away so I didn't linger too long.  I crossed the Mackinac Bridge, doing my best to stay in the lane made of concrete rather than the one with the open grate floor!  Once across the bridge, one can stay on I-75 to Sault Ste. Marie or do as I did and take route 123 toward Whitefish Bay.  I did a quick check in at Curley's Paradise Motel, where I was treated to a room facing the water and a free "old" towel to wipe the dew off my motorcycle in the morning!  I dropped off my back and immediately jumped back on the road, up Whitefish Point Road to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.  The museum, on Lake Superior at the entrance to Whitefish Bay, is home to a working lighthouse (fully automated now and controlled from Sault Ste. Marie) and several old Coast Guard buildings, including a "rescue station" where they display an original surf boat, used to rescue sailors tossed into the water from shipwrecks off Whitefish Point.  You can also tour the old lighthouse keeper's original house and view a short film, but the main thing I was there to see was in the museum exhibit.  I've been somewhat fascinated (and horrified) by the Edmund Fitzgerald ever since my dad introduced me to Gordon Lightfoot's music when I was a kid.  "The Mighty Fitz" was like the Titanic of the Great Lakes, but she broke in half during a terrible November storm in 1975 and no one has really ever definitively answered the question of "why?"  In 1995, the Great Lakes Historical Society and the National Geographic Society teamed up with the US Navy and Coast Guard to send a diver down over 500 feet to retrieve the Fitz's bell, which is now on display at the museum.  In its place was left a replica bell engraved with the names of the 29 sailors lost when she sank.  It's actually illegal to dive on the wreckage because it's so deep and so cold - there's a $1 million fine if you're caught!  So the diver they sent down had to wear a pressurized Newtsuit, which is an aluminum hard suit that maintains 1 atmosphere of pressure inside so the diver does not have to decompress on the way back to the surface.