I should start off by saying I got this cool new job where I spend a lot of time traveling to cool new locations around the United States doing some river depth mapping. This in turn gives me a lot of cool opportunities to go check out beautiful places and cool events. We move a round a lot but the past few days I've been in Mackinaw City and we got to enjoy a half day of work which also meant a half day of play.
Next to the marina where we are storing our survey boat was a GIANT decommissioned US Coast Guard Icebreaker!
83 the Mackinaw was in service since the 70's till 2006, she was the hard working girl on the great lakes breaking ice allowing safe passage.
The "Mighty Mack" used diesel electric engines and a three prop system to break the ice of the great lakes. Two props in the back one on the port one on the starboard side, like a typical vessel, but a third prop in the front. This forward prop was how she broke the ice, Mighty Mack never used sheer brute force to break ice sheets, she would use the front propellor to suck the water out from under the ice sheet making the ice sink lower and become less structurally sound with its base being pulled away, then the boat would smash down on top of the ice breaking it a freeing up a path.
The Icebreaker was powered by a diesel electric motor, the electricity for it was powered by two locomotive engines!
This floating museum was a total treat! The only sad part is, since we came straight from the boat I forgot to take the polarizer lens off my camera so not all the photos came out nice.
Did you know that two of the competitors in this years lumberjack games live in Mackinaw city? I didn't, we simply stumbled upon a tourist pamflit that said lumberjack show and immdeitly went to go see it.
The show was your typical tourist attraction, with stadium seating, music (actually just cotton eyed joe on repeat), food for purchases, the announcer gave us some history of the lumber jack competitions and news about the competitors and the future competitions, witty banter from the competing lumberjacks and audience participation. Over all a super fun show.
The show began with a who could cut a cookie off a log faster contest.
Then log chopping
Then the ever impressive axe throwing event
One of the games the lumberjacks competed in was where they had to chop a notch in a tree place a board to stand on and continue this pattern until they reached the top and they could start chopping at the top!
Climbing 40ft into a tree and down the fastest
The fan favorite, LOG ROLLING
Then the final game was a relay race.
Even though the other team won it was a blast! The crowd was hyped and the lumberjacks where phenomenal it was an amazing time! Good Luck to these boys in the televised competition this year in October.