6/12 Fort Mackinac, Mackinaw City, MI

Are you asking why "Mackinaw" is spelled two different ways?  The answer is that it depends who settled the location first and thus got to name it.  Mackinac Island and Fort Mackinac were French so they were spelled with the "ac" ending.  The city of Mackinaw was an English city, so it was spelled the English way.

Fort Mackinac is a reconstruction of the fort that was established here in 1780.  Previously, the area had been a fur trading post and Indian settlement known as Michilimackinac from 1671.  The original fort was built by the French in about 1715 but abandoned in 1761 when the English took over.

Anyway, it turned out to be a very pleasant sunny day, so we enjoyed our visit to the fort.  Here are a few photos.

Of course, I had to take my umpteenth photo of the Mackinac Bridge.

We just missed the musket shooting demonstration.

We did get to watch the cannon firing demonstration, except I jumped to much trying to take a photo that it did not turn out.  Here they are, anyway, getting ready to fire.  Next time I am going to stand back farther so it doesn't startled me so much.  

 

Had to add this last photo my son took.  My hands jumped a foot when the cannon went off, so I did not get a good photo of the actual "bang."