Clyde’s Place
6337 Paradise TrailOne more night in Mackinaw City. We had another 14 hour day scheduled for Saturday but Friday was going to be my last night. I wanted to get home and see my family so I chose to drive the 4 1/2 hours once we got back to Mackinaw City around 9:00 Saturday night.
Friday night, we got back to the City around 7:30. I was in the mood for wings. My co-worker was in the mood for pizza so we went our separate ways again.
My plan was to finally go to the Keyhole Bar in downtown Mackinaw City but there was a pretty long wait and in a small crowded building I didn’t really want to be in. So, I looked for some place else.
That some place else took me about ten minutes south of Mackinaw City to Carp Lake.
I was really just looking for wings when I stumbled on a Google listing for Clyde’s Place.
The small bar is calls themselves “The Sportsman’s Choice.” It’s located on Paradise Trail south of Gill Road on Lake Paradise in Carp Lake Township. It’s really dark at night in the part of Michigan so it’s actually pretty easy to drive by if you’re not paying attention. An unlit sign near the road is your indication that you’ve found the right place.
Read more…Mackinac Island Brewhouse
312 S. Huron Avenue- Mackinaw City, MI 49701
- (231) 436-5940
- No Known Website
- No Online Menu
Thursday was kind of our short day while working a full week on Mackinac Island. I say short because it was only 7 hours instead of the 12-14 we had been working.
We got over to the Island on the first ferry which leaves Mackinaw City at 7:30. We did what we had to do then rushed back down to the docks for the 10:30 AM ferry just as it was starting to rain.
I still had a few hours of work to do but I could do that back in my hotel. We really wanted to beat the rain since we had to walk from the Grand Hotel to the ferry then from the ferry to our hotel in Mackinaw City.
I had plans that day. I was going to drive over to St. Ignance just to look around. I did that and got lunch at Clyde’s Drive-In. Then I was going to get fudge and some souveniers. I did that at Mackinac Island Fudge Company. I also thought I would go see a movie. I haven’t seen Shang-Chi yet and there’s apparently a small movie theater in Mackinaw City. I slept through that though. There was only one showing at 6:30 and I fell asleep watching King of the Hill around 4:00
By the time I woke up, I would have been pushing it to make it to the theater in time. I said screw it and thought I’d go check out the brewery across the street instead.
Mackinac Island Brewhouse is on Huron Street across from Conkling Heritage Park. The brewhouse is part of the larger Mackinaw Bay Trading Company complex. The building is pretty large and going by old Google maps, this part of the building used to be a Harley Davidson apparel store.
Read more…Devon’s Mackinac Island Fudge Company (Huron Street)
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502 S. Huron StreetYou have to get fudge when going to Mackianc Island….right?
I was spending a week working on Mackinac Island but staying in Mackinaw City. We really didn’t have any time at all to be tourists while on the Island. Our schedule was pretty tight taking the earliest ferry could to get there and the latest we could to get back. There really wasn’t any time to do any shopping on the Island.
Fortunately, there was a fudge shop right across the street from my hotel. There are actually several fudge shops in Mackinaw City but after trying pretty much every store on Mackinac Island, I’ve never noticed enough of a difference to find a place that is “must have.”
I ate lunch in St. Ignace on Thursday and kind of thought about just buying fudge at a place over there. I could have and actually passed a couple but I headed back to my hotel to walk across the street to the place I passed every morning on the way to the ferry.
Devon’s Mackinac Island Company fudge has a couple of locations in Mackinaw City as well as production facility across the bridge in St. Ignace. I stopped at the downtown location last time I was in Mackinaw City so this time, I went to the bigger one on Huron Street in Mackinaw Bay Trading Company.
Read more…Clyde’s Drive-In
178 US-2I’ve been coming up to Mackinaw City for work every so often for several years now. In all that time, I’ve never really stopped in St. Ignace. I drove around St. Ignace a couple of times but I’ve never stopped at any place other than a gas station or even went to check out what the downtown had to offer.
I got off work pretty early on Day 4 of our trip to Mackinac Island. We caught the first ferry over to the Island at 7:30 then caught the 10:30 back. I still had some work to finish up but I did so in my hotel room. I clocked out for the day at about 2:00 giving me the rest of the afternoon to explore and nap.
It was a rainy crappy day so I didn’t get to do any of the things I actually wanted to do. I was determined to cross the Mackinac Bridge for lunch though and at least drive around St. Ignace to see what I’m missing out on.
I chose Clyde’s Drive-In for lunch. It’s not in downtown St. Ignace but it looked interesting.
Clyde’s Drive in is on US-2 just west of the I-75 interchange just west of the city limits. The drive-in is pretty standard drive in from a bygone era. There is a large canopy in front of a small building. Almost all of the stalls were full when I pulled in right around 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon.
Read more…Audie’s Restaurant
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314 Nicolet StreetDay 3 ended in Mackinaw City just like the previous two days. We knew we had an early Day 4 so neither myself or co-worker were interested in going out for dinner. He’s a little smarter than me though. He brought sandwich materials and has been eating in his room before going to bed early. That reminds me too much of a childhood eating Carl Budding lunch meats on family vacations…plus, I like eating out when I travel.
I really wasn’t in the mood to sit down anywhere so I started looking for some place to do take out. There was only one place that did online ordering in Mackinaw City that I could find so that’s where I ordered dinner.
Audie’s Restaurant sits in the shadow of the Mackinac Bridge on Nicolet Street right at the entrance to I-75 northbound. The restaurant actually has a couple of different options. Audie’s is the family joint but there’s also the Chippewa Room which offers a little more upscale dining. I’m more of a burger guy than a steak guy so Audie’s was a good choice.
Nonna Lisa’s Italian Restaurant
312 S. Huron StreetThere are quite a few more restaurants than I remember there being in Mackinaw City. I’ve traveled to the tip of the mitten for work several times over the past ten years and finding something new has always been a challenge. Either I haven’t been looking or there are more places opening up.
Day 2 of work on Mackinac Island ended like Day 1. We got back to the ferry docks around 7:30, co-worker didn’t feel like going out to eat so I walked to a place not too far from our hotel.
Nonna Lisa’s Italian Restaurant is part of a complex of businesses inside the Mackinaw Bay Trading Company Shopping Center on Huron Street. There is parking right in front of the restaurant as well as a parking lot behind it. I walked from my hotel so I entered off Huron Street and that just created all sorts of confusion.
Read more…The Hook Lakeside Grill
201 S. Huron AvenueThe days are typically pretty long when I travel for work and they don’t allow for a lot of breaks. This trip is no different.
We’re working on Mackinac Island but staying in Mackinaw City. That means early mornings to catch the ferry, a lot of walking, and late nights catching the last ferry off the Island to get back to the hotel.
We got back to the hotel around 7:30 our first full day in town. Co-worker was tired and was just going to eat a sandwich he had in his hotel room for dinner. I was pretty exhausted too but wanted a cold beer and a decent sandwich so I dropped my work gear off in my room and walked back to a restaurant we passed on our walk from the ferry docks.
The Hook Lakeside Grill is an interesting looking place. The restaurant is on Huron Street a little bit south of downtown Mackinaw City. The restaurant is on stilts right on the Straits of Mackinaw near the Icebreaker musuem. The elevation makes the restaurant “lakeside” so you can get a good view of the water…something you wouldn’t get if the restaurant were at street level.
Read more…Breakers
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967 Straits HighwayI feel like I just took a work trip. Yeah..that’s cause I did. I was just in Upstate New York a few weeks ago and now I was going to spend a week in Mackinaw City. I feel really bad leaving J and the kids for that long but these trips are an aspect of my job I really like. It’s really, really unusual for trips like this to happen back to back. Usually it’s several months between trips.
I headed up to Mackinaw City on Sunday to start work on Monday morning. I got a pretty late start because I decided to sign us all up for the Kids ROAR at the Sherman Lake YMCA Camp. It was a blast…we got super muddy and had a great time.
We got home around 2:00 after stopping at McDonalds in Galesburg for the kids. I played Switch with B for a few minutes, took a shower, gave him a bath, then got my car loaded up to head north around 3:30.
It was always my plan to stop and get a pizza along the way. I had a place scoped out about a half hour from Mackinaw City but was kind of worried about time. I had back ups in Gaylord if I needed it but traffic was pretty light and I made pretty good time heading towards the Mighty Mac.
Breakers is the restaurant I chose to stop at. This road side tavern sits right Mullet Lake on Straits Highway just south of Topinabee in Mullett Township. The business has been there since the 1940’s but it became Breakers in 2005 switching focus to burgers and craft beer.
Read more…Figgs Fast Food
559 Hamblin AvenueI’ve been using The Carryout Club on Facebook quite a bit to find new places in Battle Creek but I still have a few places that I’ve found on my own and have meaning to get to.
I had a little bit of extra time in town a few weeks ago. I was assigned to a job in the afternoon that we got done pretty early. My co-worker just met me in Battle Creek because he had to go somewhere after work so I was on my own when we got done.
We finished up work around 4:00. I didn’t have time for lunch but I was ok with it. I knew a place I have been meaning to go to for several years and I was finally in town and free when they were open.
Figgs Fast Food doesn’t look like much. It’s a small cinder block building on the corner of Hamblin Avenue and Angell Street west of downtown. The building is really small and the parking lot is full of potholes but I’ve heard so many good things about this place, I wasn’t going to be deterred by the looks.
Anchor Bar (Buffalo)
1047 Main StreetOur trip to Upstate New York was really quick. We drove in on Tuesday, worked a little bit, checked out the National Baseball Hall of Fame, worked all day Wednesday, then drove home Thursday.
I had a lot I wanted to pack in this trip even though we had a couple of long work days. I accomplished one of those things on Tuesday with a quick run through the Baseball Hall of Fame. The other major goal was to find the place that invented the chicken wing.
Buffalo wings are (hopefully) obviously named after the City of Buffalo. We were passing through Buffalo on our way to and from Utica where we were staying. We didn’t have time on the way there to stop but we had really no place to hurry to on our way home.
We stopped at a Service Center about an hour and a half from Buffalo to use the bathroom. Co-worker asked if I wanted Tim Horton’s. I said no, I was planning on stopping in Buffalo for lunch. We hadn’t had time to sit down and have an actual meal on the company dime so he thought that sounded like a good idea.
We have a couple of co-workers that worked in Buffalo for a few years so my co-worker sent them a text asking for lunch recommendations. He didn’t realize that I already had plans. Our Buffalo source basically told us one thing. “Anywhere but the Anchor Bar.”
Ha. That was my plan on all along. We were going to the Original Anchor Bar.
Buffalo wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in downtown Buffalo on the corner of Main and North Street. The story goes Teressa Bellissimo threw the wing parts, usually reserved for soup back in those days, in to the deep fryer and coated them in a “secret sauce” for her son’s friends back in 1964. The wings took off and almost 50 years, we’re eating millions of pounds of wings every year. The building has expanded quite a bit since that day in 1964 but if you pick this Anchor Bar location, you’re walking in to the original.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 