It might surprise readers to learn that although it says “Part 2”, we’re still on the same day . . . Saturday, September 17. You should, of course, read Part 1 if you missed it, otherwise, the following sentence might not make sense.

We left Machilimackinac State Park and headed to the McGulpin Point Lighthouse.

As mentioned before, the image has been edited using DxO ViewPoint 3.0. I use the program to remove the distortion from photos taken with ultra-wide lenses. For instance, take note of where the grass begins and how close it is to the lighthouse.

The above is pretty drastic, and some might prefer the originals to the adjusted photos . . . but since I’m not providing those, they’ll have to make do with the occasional examples.

A quick word for people who have the Note 20 Ultra with the option for 100MB photos: it’s not worth it. Yes, it takes large photos (12,000×9,000 pixels), but the resolution is not helped by the extra data, at least not that I can tell. Unfortunately, nearly all the photos I snapped with the phone were at that high resolution. Live and learn.

Note to the left of the building, there is a path and a number of placards. They list the shipwrecks that happened near the Mackinaw Straits. Rather than paste them all here, I set up a slideshow for them who are interested. You should be able to manually advance the slideshow, giving you the chance to read the information.

Slideshow of McGulpin Point Lighthouse Placards.

Note that you need a large(ish) screen to read them without zooming in. There are, however, three that I’ll share here (click for larger versions).

The Great Lakes be dangerous, for sure.

There was one other building that contained a bunch of wall plates documenting the French Indian War and the 1750 life of both settlers and American Indians in the area (related links: HERE, HERE, and HERE).

I photographed them all, and I might share them, but you can click on those links for more than you probably wanted to know about both.

Then, we headed across the straights. It was a beautiful day and, as is my wont, I decided to film us crossing the Mackinaw Bridge.

Nota Bene: please don’t take this as an endorsement of using your phone to film scenery while driving (unless you’re the passenger). I, having mucho grande experience and skill in such matters, can do it because of said mucho grandiosa ability to do dangerous stuff without actually putting us in danger. Some, my wife for one, might disagree, but she can’t point to any instance where we crashed and died. Or even crashed. Bottom line, don’t do it.

I was a bit disappointed at not having captured the whole crossing . . . but was consoled by the fact that we would be crossing it the other way the very next day.

Anyway, upon entering the U.P., we exited I-75 and went to see the St. Ignace lighthouse . . .

“Too much lipstick.”

That’s what I thought, Bob!

In fact, I thought it was a cheap tourist attraction because it was right next to a couple of tourist attractions and the terminal for the ferry to Mackinaw Island. That’s why we didn’t hang around, and also because the area was congested due to some road work.

It was only later that I figured out that was the Wawatam Lighthouse, a soulless automated affair (with too much makeup). The light has an interesting life, starting with a meaningless and meager beginning and eventually finding purpose as a navigation aid. But, you can read it yourselves by clicking on the link.

Anyway, we decided to head to DeTour Village along the Scenic (a. k. a. M-134). We used to have a cabin near there, and have lots of good memories about the place. One of the things we liked was the scarcity of people . . . but, it looks a bit more built-up. Not surprising after 20 years. Anyway, we got to the marina just in time to see a freighter pass by . . .

. . . and it was a Deja Vu moment because I have almost the same shot from the last century (pre-digital).

Not a very good image because it’s a scan from a print, and the scan wasn’t all that good. I could enhance it (I did double its size) but it’s OK to show what I used to be pleased with.

Anyway, those first two freighter photos were taken with the phone . . . as were these next two photos. Each of the four was processed with a different editor, trying to find post-processing settings that work well with phone photos.

I guess it also depends on the photo . . . and while the process is important to me, there’s no denying that it’s a beautiful setting and that it was a beautiful day.

By the way, there’s a new option on my Note 20 for photos with a large expanse of sky . . . an icon pops up of a clockface . . . click it, and the program edits the photo to simulate a 24-hr cycle. For instance, taking one of the above photos . . .

Next up, is a stitched panorama from two photos taken with the D7500 and the 70-300mm lens. I had to stitch two photos because I’d left the wide-angle lens in the car . . .

Once the freighter got a bit farther away (and I backed up about fifty feet), one photo at 70mm sufficed . . .

Actually, we had just missed a previous freighter passing between DeTour and Drummond Island, but it was almost around the corner from the marina.

Next, another panorama (three photos, this time) as the freighter pulled away from us.

Finally, a couple of shots of some people kayaking . . .

Anyway, we got back to the car and made our way up to the Soo. If you remember from the previous post, Melisa had made reservations for our stay. We picked the Ojibway Hotel because it’s literally next door to the locks.

We missed a freighter that was going through just as we got there, but we did catch a barge going the other way. The tug’s engines just fired up (warning: lower volume when playing because it’s loud!!) and is pushing the barge out of the lock and into Lake Michigan.

I cut the video short because I’m used to YouTube showing videos shot in landscape mode even when shot in portrait mode. Not Vimeo! Had I known, this would have been one take.

Before I shot the videos, I snapped a few photos . . . the light was lovely . . .

The videos and those two photos were snapped with the Note 20. I then switched to the P900 . . .

Everyone calls these the Soo Locks, but it’s actually called this . . .

As you can see from the photos of the road fronting the locks, there were more tourist shops to be had, but it was getting late, and we were tired.

And yes, that’s our Hotel . . .

I was interested in the hotel because it’s close to the locks, and while the room was clean, it was small and dated. The bathroom could definitely have used an upgrade. Still, we had a bed to sleep on, although you had to be careful not to hit your head on the slanted wall and window wells.

I had asked whether we could see the locks from the room, and the answer was ‘yes’.

Well, we might have been able to look out had the windows not been terribly etched . . . and had the trees been trimmed. I mean, you could catch glimpses of something outside, and we could recognize trees, but that’s about it.

Anyway, that’s it for our second day of travel … about 400 miles and 6 hours and 30 minutes of driving plus all the stops.

Here’s the slideshow of the above photos plus one or two more.

Slideshow of the 1,909 miles and 102 hours — part 2 Gallery — 46 photos

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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