The middle finger and the ring finger

People in the lower peninsula of Michigan don't use maps to navigate or describe locations. Instead they hold up a hand held in the shape of a mitten and point to a location on the hand, or describe the location in terms of fingers.

Since we entered lower Michigan today, it's time for us to adopt this convention. We entered at Mackinac, the very top of the middle finger (the fingernail) and then made our way down to the tip of the ring finger.

And how exactly did we get from the UP to lower Michigan? We didn't swim and we certainly didn't cycle across the Mackinac bridge. We cheated and got a ride across the bridge from the bridge authority. This is a bargain at $8.50 for a bike and 2 riders - it costs $4 to cross in your own car.

Is there even a far side to this bridge?

The spot where you wait for the bike shuttle is a police post. The only ways to get there on a bike are to either go the wrong way on a one way road or to bike down interstate 75. We chose the wrong way option.

The Michigan state police emblem features two rearing quadrupeds. We couldn't decide if they were elks, mooses, or perhaps one of each.

Unknown animals grace the police emblem.

Seagulls hang out in the police parking lot.

When our ride arrived, he just pulled onto the shoulder of I-75.

Perfect fit. I rode across the bridge standing in the trailer to get a better view of lakes Huron and Michigan.

The highlight of the day was a trip to a fish hatchery. This was one of half a dozen hatcheries run by the state of Michigan. Other hatcheries are run by tribes, the federal government, and private businesses. This hatchery raises only brown trout and rainbow trout, although there are plans to add grayling in the future. Other state hatcheries specialize in different fish.

Although the hatchery handles thousands of fish, the process is surprisingly hands on and low tech. The first building we visited contains 3 - 6 year old fish, separated by species and by sex. These are the breeding fish. The sex is identified by hand, one fish at a time.

The tank in front containers only females, the tank behind contains only males.

Fertilizing the eggs is very hands on (for the people, not so much for the fish). They use a net to corral the fish in one end of the tank, then squeeze eggs out of the females (3,000 - 6,000 per fish), and squeeze milt out of the males. This is not like cattle where one bull can impregnate a whole herd of cows. Because of the large number of eggs per female, they actually need more male fish than female fish for this process.

Another hands on activity is vaccinating the fish once per year. For the 3 - 6 year olds, this is done by injecting each fish. The younger fish are too small to be injected.

The second building we visited contained fertilized eggs and the youngest fish.

Each of these trays contains thousands of fertilized eggs.

When the eggs hatch the smallest fish go into these tanks.

The third building had a run for young fish. Every 90 minutes an automated feeding system would serve them a meal. When they get to be 14 months old, they are released into the wild. I wonder how long they spend in a natural stream waiting for the feeding machine to appear before they figure out they have to catch their own food?

The fish run. The black color is a mass of fish, the blue is the bottom of the tank. The automated feeder runs along the overhead track. For some reason this end if the run is more popular than the other end.

In case you're wondering what juvenile fish eat, I snapped a picture of the ingredients in the fish meal. Poultry byproduct meal, feather meal, blood meal - delicious!

Do these ducklings have any idea how much fish enjoy eating feathers?

Our ride finished up in Petoskey (on the ring finger). Traffic through town on US-31 was horrible, but fortunately there was a nice bike path along the lake shore that completely avoided the street traffic.

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