Last winter Carol had asked if we would be interested in joining her and John in walking the Mackinac Bridge during the annual bridge walk. I'm always willing to try something different so I said yes. When the alarm went off at 5 am I was wondering what I had been thinking when I said "yes, let's walk the bridge". The governor starts the walk on the St. Ignace side of the bridge at 7am. Between 7am and 11 am walkers are allowed to start walking the 5 miles across the bridge. John and Ed, both avid photographers, wanted to get photos when the bridge was full of walkers so they wanted to be at the start of the walk between 7:30 and 8:00. Working backwards resulted in the 5am wake-up (5:30am for Ed).

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A bus driver told us 80 school buses were used to transport people across the bridge. Police boats patrolled under the bridge and the National Guard were on the bridge. I was a little surprised to see all bags being searched by the police before you could walk on the bridge but I guess after the Boston Marathon bombing, security has been beefed up every where.

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The plan worked well we got to see the governors party near the beginning of the walk. By time we saw the Governor a couple of recumbent bicycles and the runners were ahead of him. Carol and I started our walk at 7:30 and we off the bridge by 9:35. The boys took a lot longer but then the stopped to take a lot of photos.

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The mass of people walking the bridge. I was pleasantly surprised that even though the road was busy there wasn't a real crush of people.

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To commemorate their walking of the bridge, some people buy badges and sew them onto a jacket. This fellow told Ed and John that he has walked the bridge 32 times.

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Two lanes of the bridge are grates, Ed walked on the grated lane and took some interesting photos.

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At the finish line .... we made sure that we crossed the official line.

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I guess this was a necessary but definitely not comforting site.

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We drove to St. Ignace which meant taking a bus back across the bridge to St. Ignace after the walk. Carol and I were elected to fetch the car as the "boys" were still walking the bridge. Waiting in line for the bus was the slowest part of the day. The "boys" were just reaching the finish line when Carol and I arrived back in Mackinaw City with the car.

Felt like a full day when we arrived back at the house just after noon.