Alum Cave was first referenced in a land grant application by three North Carolina farmers in 1837. The resulting Epsom Salts Manufacturing Company mined alum, Epsom salt, saltpeter, magnesia, and copperas in the area until the salts were depleted in the mid 1840s. Today, it is part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and a popular destination along the Alum Cave Trail.
I love Maker Faires. Traveling around has let me attend quite a few of them. They certainly range in size but "the greatest show and tell on earth" always has something to entertain be it robots, 3-D printers, circuit boards, science experiments, or any number of other do-it-yourself tinkering projects on display. The Nashville contribution is what is considered a "Mini Maker Faire." It only lasted one day in the parking lot of the Adventure Science Center and had the misfortune to coincide with rain. All the same, we were there to see what was up in Nashville.
Temperature control is a lie you tell your body. That lie dissipates as quickly as sweat droplets form on your skin from the wall of humidity that meets you at the threshold to the outside. The outdoors are for mornings and evenings. But for the next few days, we will be seeking midday shelter in the home of a friend outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
Lake Michigan covers 22,404 square miles of the earth's surface—slightly smaller than West Virginia—with 1,640 miles of shore line. That makes it the fifth largest lake lake in the world. With 1,180 cubic miles of water, It is also the second largest of the Great Lakes of North America by volume.
Draught House and Mary's Bistro are two gastronomic draws under one roof.
Tranquil Bluff Trail traces 3 miles of bluffs along the eastern side of Mackinac Island from Arch Rock to British Landing. The route is moderately difficult, with many inclines and declines, but possibly the most challenging part of the path is staying on it. The trail is barely indistinguishable from the rest of the forest floor and several times we only realized that we had wandered off the trail because we found ourselves in a clump of dense brush.
Arch Rock is the de facto tourist stop on Mackinac Island. Rising 146 feet above the shoreline, the natural limestone arch forms a particularly noteworthy appendage to Mackinac Island's bluffs. It has been a place of myth and legend to local tribes and a popular stop for early tourists. Indeed, the arch was a deciding factor in establishing Mackinac National Park back in 1975.*
We arrived on Mackinac Island in time for brunch at The Carriage House.
There is no shortage of options for getting to Mackinac. There are multiple ferry services but they all seem to charge the same amount.
The most important thing to remember about Mackinac Island is to call it "Mackinaw Island." It would be a devastating faux pas to pronounce the silent "c." After that, one might want to make some airy allusion to dinner at the Grand Hotel, which charges any non-hotel guest $10 just to enter the grounds. Mackinac Island is a place of meticulous refinement. While it may be suspended between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan the island's classic victorian mansions and elegant hotels tell a different tale. This 3.8 square mile island might as well have been plucked from some east coast seaside village and dropped in Lake Huron.