Weekend adventures, part 2

The weekend's excitement did not end with that trip to Petoskey on Saturday; I also had to drive the fiancé back to the airport on Sunday.  This time there were no weather conditions affecting air travel so his flight departed as scheduled from Chippewa County International Airport.  Driving someone to the airport is usually not that big of a deal, but then one usually doesn't have to drive across the Mackinac Bridge in order to get to said airport.  I had been over the bridge in the past but had never driven across myself.  Thankfully, I don't drive a Yugo, so my car didn't get blown off the bridge even though I drove over the grating in the middle lanes, but when you can still feel the winds buffeting your car it's a bit unnerving when you're 200 feet above a body of water that's almost 300 feet deep.

I told the fiancé to take the photos for this one since I certainly wasn't going to take my hands off the wheel.

Approaching the Bridge from I-75; at this point we'd already  passed the last exit possible in the Lower Peninsula.  The sign on the right says "REDUCE SPEED" but people were still going 70 at this point.

Looking east toward Lake Huron.

Ooh, we're on the Bridge!  So far so good.  But we're really high up and we're not even to the towers...

The car's swerving because I'm driving on the grating and this never happens when I drive over grating on other bridges and it's super windy and it's really far down to the water OMG

I would like it to be known that I drive over bridges with grating every time I visit my parents; it's just that those bridges don't face the wind that the Mackinac Bridge does, so my car doesn't swerve back and forth ordinarily.

Now that I am not, at the moment, driving a car across the Bridge, I can appreciate how much of a feat of engineering it is.

Made it!  And that van there totally makes the photo that much more "Upper Peninsula".

Our destination of the day.  It has flights to and from Detroit, and the security checkpoint doesn't even open until about 45 minutes before takeoff.  Fun fact: the airport used to be Kincheloe Air Force Base with a squadron of B-52s in the '50s and '60s.

On my way back; this time I've got to do it on my own.  Definitely glad I'm in a car and not on a motorcycle like the people in front of me.

The loooong approach from the north side.  Needless to say I couldn't take any more photos after this.  The ride back was only slightly less harrowing than the ride up but I managed to make it despite the car in the right lane deciding not to get out of my blind spot and, therefore, preventing me from changing lanes.