Every summer, roughly a zillion tourists point their rented SUVs north and pay $4 to cross the Mackinac Bridge, also known as "Mighty Mac," which stretches five miles across the Straits of Mackinac and connects Michigan's two peninsulas.
It's the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere between anchorages, and it is genuinely cool.
It is also, according to basically everyone who has ever driven it, absolutely terrifying.
The bridge opened in 1957 after four years of construction and one very unfortunate collapse-era vibe that engineers would prefer you not bring up at dinner.
Before it existed, cars crossed the straits by ferry, which sounds charming until you remember Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are basically two giant ice baths that occasionally decide to merge into a single rage entity.
The bridge takes about ten minutes, assuming the guy ahead of you doesn't stop dead in the middle to take a photo of the water like he's never seen a lake before.
Here's the thing nobody warns you about: the bridge is five miles of two-lane driving with a speed limit that feels like a suggestion and a center lane that gets reconfigured depending on the season.
If you're driving a big rig or towing anything, you're supposed to use the outer lanes, and if the wind is blowing — and it is always blowing — you will feel your entire vehicle attempt to file a complaint with the universe.
There's a whole crew of bridge employees who will literally drive your car across for you if you're too scared, which is a service that exists and is somehow not more famous.
The straits can be sunny on one side and producing a fog wall on the other like some kind of meteorological betrayal.
High winds shut the bridge down to certain vehicles on the regular, and ice falling off the cables has historically been known to redecorate windshields.
And then there's the fact that the bridge has its own security force, its own maintenance staff, and a toll that has crept up over the years like everything else in this economy.
It's also a five-mile anxiety simulator with a gift shop at the end. **Opinion:** The Mackinac Bridge is a genuine American landmark and I respect it deeply from a distance of at least one state away.
Final Thoughts
If you're brave enough to cross it, more power to you, but I'll be over here taking the ferry that no longer exists.