The lower peninsula of Michigan is shaped like a mitten. It’s actually called a mitten, and Tawas City, where we stayed for several days is at the upper part of the hand section of the mitten near the thumb area.

Bay City is at the bottom of where the thumb joins the hand on the mitten. We drove down there one day to see the coastline and scenery. Bay City is pretty, right along the Saginaw River where it empties into Saginaw Bay. Much of the riverfront is parkland with walking trails, grassy areas etc. It’s really beautiful.

I’ve attached a map of Michigan showing where we stayed on the east Coast (Tawas City), where we took the shipwreck tour (Thunder Bay), and where we drove one day (Bay City).

While on the east coast of Michigan which is on Lake Huron, we took a boat tour to view some shipwrecks in Thunder Bay. The Great Lakes have many, many shipwrecks over the years due to heavy shipping through the 1800s and early 1900s together with the bad weather and storms in the area. Over a dozen are in the Thunder Bay area and some of these are in shallow water and visible from a glass bottom boat.

We saw two shipwrecks on our tour, the first was the New Orleans which was a side wheel steamboat used to bring passengers and freight from the New York area to the Michigan area. All the passengers and crew were rescued from this shipwreck. It sits in just 7.5 feet of water so it was quite visible from the boat.

The other ship was the Monohansett which was a cargo ship. It sunk in 1907 in under 10 feet of water.

Also on the tour we saw forested coastline and a couple of beautiful islands, one with a lighthouse and house for the keeper and his family.

The tour boat docks on the river and we passed under a drawbridge to get into Thunder Bay. We had a good time on the boat; here are some pictures: