Every year for the past five years , we have done a Fall trip with my cousin and her husband. Not only is it a yearly highlight for us, but it's always exciting to choose a new location to explore together. We've done Seattle and the San Juan Islands, Quebec, northern NY, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and then this past year we decided on Mackinac Island, MI. Mackinac Island is unique in that there are no cars allowed on the island, so the main means of transportation on the island is bikes and horse drawn carriages. Mackinac Island is dotted with beautiful Victorian hotels and B&B's. We opted to not stay on the island so that we could explore other parts of Michigan as well.  I'm so glad we did! We rented a house from AirBnB that was right on Lake Huron, and every night we enjoyed a bonfire by the water with the most magnificent night sky.   

It took some convincing on the guys part, but we toured the island on tandem bikes.  The hilarity that ensued was one of our favorite memories from the weekend. Let's just say that it's way more difficult to balance than it looks, and we only seemed to handle it well at high speeds (it doesn't help that I was thirty weeks pregnant).  There was a very close incident involving a horse.

The Grand Hotel! It had the most beautiful grounds.

Aside from the horses, this little one could not stop talking about the water.

We spent a lot of our evenings behind the house by the bonfire. It was a huge highlight, and Reese loved exploring the woods.