Though I grew up in Michigan, I knew next to nothing about the northeast coast of the lower peninsula until I started working on the US-23 Heritage Route website a few years ago. That's a shame, because this part of Michigan really has some amazing things to behold.
The route runs from Standish just north of Bay City all the way up the coast to Mackinaw City. I must admit I still haven't seen enough of the whole Heritage Route. But it is first a great story of region building: Starting as a disparate group of folks mostly mostly interested in the local, it has grown into a region with verve and character and common interests.
And it has a lot to offer. One of my favorites is the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which offers many accessible shipwrecks along with a great view into the Great Lakes long maritime history. The museum there, the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, has some amazing exhibits, including a full size schooner on which you can ride out a storm!
The Heritage Route ends at the Straits of Mackinac, including Mackinac Island. A sometimes overlooked part of Mackinac State Historic Parks (at least by me) is Historic Mill Creek, featured in the video below. I got to visit this site in its infancy when I was doing archaeology in St. Ignace. It is really an amazing piece of living history now.
Check out the sunrise side!

Barbara was on Women of a Certain Age, an UpNorth TV (public access) show, with Susan McQuaid and Ann-Marie Oomen. She talked about Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt and other things. Watch the show online here (it is a great show, and you should watch it all, but Barbara's part starts about 48 minutes in).

Today we talked about Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt with Cynthia Canty for her Michigan Radio show Stateside. She and her producers were gracious, professional, and did a great edit of our conversation for broadcast on the show today. Stateside is worth tuning to to find out about all kinds of important things happening in Michigan.

You may have read Carol Thompson's great article about Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt in you local newspaper. It was all accurate!

When the article about our game was written, we were in the middle of our crowd funding campaign to get the game manufactured in Michigan. Our goal with the campaign was to raise enough money to manufacture enough games that we could offer them for a price around $40. For good or ill, we did not reach our goal, so for the time being, we are offering the game for sale on a print-on-demand basis: If you order one game, they print one and send it to you. This obviously costs somewhat more than we hoped (the price is $61.99), but is the best way for us to get the game out to people at this time.

We are currently exploring options for manufacturing the game in bulk to get the cost down, but we do not have any specifics on this yet.

If you would like to wait and see what we come up with, you can sign up for our eNewsletter, or Like us on Facebook, and we will let you know if anything changes.

We really appreciate your interest, and hope that you will be playing Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt soon!

Sometimes, you have to see your best effort as a success, no matter what. Our IndieGoGo crowd funding campaign was successful, despite the fact that we didn't reach our goal. We discovered what a great and supportive set of friends and family we have. We learned that running a campaign for anything is a lot of work: Barbara sent out hundreds of mailings, we made lots of calls, and we talked with lots of people. And we learned that social media only works when emphasizing the social.

We will have games and perks for everyone that requested them from the campaign in September, and we have lots of ideas for what comes next.

This is just a start. It may take a bit longer for us to get Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt out to everyone, but it's coming. Thanks for your support!

We've reached the final five days of our crowd-funding campaign to manufacture Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt in Michigan. It has been a great adventure of meeting lots of nice people and learning a lot.

We have really been appreciating this blog post by Conner Forrest: How Startups are Like Baby Sea Turtles. It talks about how many challenges lie between concept and success, and how even a simple light can distract you from your goal.

For example, one especially persistent person we met was Tom Carr, who produced this radio story about Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt for Interlochen Public Radio.

Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt has a future, yet still has a long way to go. But we are grateful to the many folks who have nudged us in the right direction and offered time and assistance as we find our way to the water.

This is a bit of video shot by Barbara at the Original Mackinac Island Butterfly House.

This week we've been talking to some Traverse City area media. Evan Perry from MyNorth.com interviewed us and wrote a nice summary for their website. We also talked to Bill Froehlich on the WTCM Afternoon Drive show today. It was fun!

While we usually just consume media, it is interesting to participate, even in a small way, in the process. We are grateful for all the people that are out there trying hard to keep us informed of what is happening in our communities!

One of the perks available at the Beach Comber level of our IndieGoGo campaign is a set of beach stones collected by Kevin Gauthier of Korner Gem in Traverse City. Kevin literally wrote the book on beach combing Lake Huron, so we approached him to put together an authentic collection of stones that are different enough from each other to be used as pawns and scoring markers in the game.

He did a great job. The collection includes 17 pieces: 2 quartz pebbles, 2 basalt pebbles, 2 granite pebbles, 2 limestone pebbles, 2 dolomite pebbles and 2 each of green, blue and brown beach glass.  And, we included a polished Petoskey Stone to use as a season marker.

Of course we know that you can't find Petoskey Stones on Mackinac Island, but it is Michigan's State Stone (pdf) after all.

After much prevarication, our IndieGoGo crowd funding campaign launched on Saturday, May 10! You really should be a part of getting Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt manufactured, so support it at whatever level you can.  Here's a video to get things going: