Once again, it's been a while since I could update this thing, but there are some interesting things going on. First is the wife and I took a wonderful vacation to northern Michigan and Mackinac for our anniversary. We toured both forts, and spent a good full day wandering and exploring Mackinac Island. This is a picture taken at Fort Michilimackinac. You can see the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan, in the background. It was pretty amazing to see, hear and feel a 6 pounder being fired.
Here is a view of inside the fort looking over the parade grounds. Every hour they had two "interpreters" who talked about life in the fort from a soldiers perspective, and fired their muskets. They had two dressed as period soldiers(1750's-Revolution), a working blacksmith, and a "family". They actually do baking and cooking there using period tools, etc. I picked up a really neat cookbook called The History of the Hearth, which has recipes from the time period.
And here is a picture of Cathy and I outside of of the visitors center. We had this goofy thing we did of taking pictures of ourselves outside of pretty much everywhere we went. This picture is outside the welcome center at Fort Michilimackinac on the Lower Peninsula side. The Bridge actually runs right over the welcome center. You can feel and hear the cars going overhead.
This is Fort Mackinac, which on Mackinac island which is located between the Upper and Lower Peninsula's of Michigan. The only way to reach the island is by plane or ferry. Interesting story about this....it is built upon a limestone cliff on Mackinac Island. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, Fort Michilimackinc was dismantled and burned to the ground while this fort was being built.
This is a view from the ramparts of the fort, which you can see from the above picture, overlooking the harbor. During the war of 1812, the fort was retaken by the British without a shot being fired. Inside the fort are some really interesting displays. One is a diary of one of the lieutenants stationed here, along with letters he had sent to and received from his family in New York.
We took the carriage tour of the island. Neat thing about Mackinac island is that motor vehicles are not allowed. If you want to get around, you either take a horse or bicycle. Here are Huey, Duey and Louis, our faithful transportation for the day.
Here is the finished set up....well again, almost complete. I'm going to be putting two or 3 spouts in the door of the fridge. Right now, with the one keg, I have just a simple "cobra" or "picnic" tap for serving. The bottom line is it's still kegged beer on tap. After getting it in the fridge, I force carbonated it, setting up the keg with 30psi of CO2 for about 3 days, then turned it down to about 10psi for serving. Worked out pretty well. I have a hefeweisen in the basement still in secondary, and in the next few days or week, I'll get that kegged up as well.
