Moving to College: Mackinac Style

This year, both of my children are heading off to college. When you live on Mackinac, you can't just pop out to the driveway to load the car - there is little bit more planning and organization required. Starting the day before. 

The day before Move-in Day, we were up early to load the luggage cart. It had to be ready for a 7:00 am pick up. (We didn't choose that time - that's when the dray was available.)

The driver hooked up the cart and hauled it down to the dock for us. For those of you who are curious, the fee for that was $45.00.

The dray delivered the cart to the dock and the ferry shipped it across to the mainland (no charge) where the cart waited for us until my husband got off work. Since the kids wanted to have their bikes at school they road down to the dock while I rode on a taxi with the few items they forgot to get on the cart.

Once we got to the mainland it was time to Tetris the back of the car. It took some finagling, but everything fit! Luckily my son's roommate was bringing the fridge and microwave, otherwise each kid would have had one of those items on their lap. (The car is a Ford Expedition Max, if you're wondering.) We like to go up to Marquette the night before and get an early start moving in. Campus is much easier to navigate on Move-in Day when you sign up for an 8:00 am move in time!

Once we arrived at Northern, we unloaded into two separate bins and each kid went their own way. K to Maple West and S to Magers Hall.

Mr. Second Year had absolutely no interest in help setting up his room... none.

but K, asked for help, so we spent some time unpacking and helping her get organized for her first year away from home.

Then Allen and I hopped in the car and headed home. Well, we actually stopped at Meijer first to pick up groceries and then we headed home. Home to an empty nest!