Mackinac

When I lived in Virginia I took several trips—to D. C., to Monticello, to the Shenandoah Valley—but I also passed up some opportunities and now regret that I didn’t do more with the short time I had there. Nowadays I try not to pass up these opportunities for the sake of a quiet weekend at home because I now know that I will regret it. So my friend Britt told me she was going to try to get a group of people together to visit Mackinac Island sometime this summer I told her to count me in. I came awfully close to backing out several times, especially this week when circumstances beyond my control put me below my weekly work hours and a Saturday to catch up would have been really nice, but in the end I reminded myself for the hundredth time that, yes, I really would regret not going, and on Friday evening I packed a bag and drove to our designated meeting place without thinking once about the work I could have been doing (actually, it wasn’t really that hard to put it out of mind).

There were four of us, and we left Ann Arbor at about 7:30 and drove to Harrison, about halfway to our destination, where, after driving past our turnoff five our six times in the dark forests of central Michigan, we finally located the usually-unoccupied cabin belonging to some of Britt’s friends who had generously agreed to let us stay the night. The cabin was musty and there was only one bed and about a couch and a half of sleeping space (I ended up laying out pillows on the floor of the bedless master bedroom), not to mention a grandfather clock that began chiming six o’clock at four in the morning, or the neighbors' big, friendly, untethered husky who had no concept of his own strength, but it was a real house in a perfect location—a lot cheaper than staying in a hotel, and a lot more comfortable than camping—and I think we were all more than grateful.

The next morning we drove through some very pretty, green country and arrived at Lake Huron around ten. Mackinac Island is a very small island, about the size of Central Park, up by the bridge between “mainland” Michigan and the Upper Peninsula (the UP), where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. Back in 1898 the island banned those newfangled horseless carriages and, amazingly enough, more than a century of the exhaust fumes, rush hour traffic, spaghetti-bowl freeway intersections, and construction bottlenecks in the outside world haven’t yet convinced the residents to lift the ban. This means that once you have made the 15 or 20 minute ferry trip from Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island (they are both pronounced “Mackinaw” thanks to the strange consonant-dropping linguistic practices of the French), your transportation is limited to horse-drawn carriages if you have money, and to bicycles and your own two feet if you are not.

The first thing we did after disembarking was to find the nearest of many bike rental shops and rent one-speed cruisers with wide seats and even wider handlebars for a trip around the island on M-185, the only Michigan state highway on which cars are not allowed. In its entirety, the 8-mile trip took just over an hour at a leisurely pace with several stops for photographs. The weather was absolutely perfect. Earlier this week Michigan was scorching, with both temperature and humidity in or near the nineties and not much cooling at night, but things have cooled down a little in the last few days. On Mackinac light clouds drifted in and out throughout the day and it was warm enough to feel like summer and to travel about the island comfortably in short sleeves and flip-flops, and cool enough that we never once had to seek out shade.

Mackinac is a very pretty island, covered shore to peak in greenery and lined with whitewashed houses and wide green lawns. The island is famous not only for its lack of motorized transportation, its scenery, and its fudge, the smell of which drifts out of shops along the entire main thoroughfare, but also for the Grand Hotel, a large white wooden building looking out over the town at the top of the hill. It has a huge balcony along its front face, and you must pay $12 a head just to enter the door if you don’t have a reservation. You’re also not allowed on even the road in front of the hotel without the proper attire and there are guards posted to make sure only paying customers wander past the designated point.

(If you have ever seen Somewhere in Time, then you have seen the Grand Hotel and Mackinac Island. This means nothing to me since I’ve never seen the movie, but apparently it means a great deal to some people—in one souvenir shop one of our party wondered aloud if Jane Seymour even realizes what a big deal she is on this little out-of-the-way tourist stop. “Oh she does, believe me,” said the girl at the cash register. “She’s been back several times. In fact, she was just here in 2003,” and she proceeded to animatedly show off postcards and other memorabilia, including some dusty videos entitled Jane Seymour Returns to Mackinac and Christopher Reeve Returns to Mackinac.)

After our bike tour we wandered the town, investigated the Grand Hotel (as far as we were allowed to), and walked along a pleasantly-secluded path to the not-so-pleasantly secluded viewpoint where every horse-drawn island tour seemed to pull in at the same time. We then proceeded down some wooden steps to M-185 again and walked back into town, stopping for a half hour to sit in the wooden lawn chairs on one of those wide, green lawns and watch the lake and the bicyclists and the bride-and-groom pictures for one of several weddings taking place on the island that day. Then we got ice cream, ogled over the fudge (but didn’t buy any for ourselves), investigated a few of the shops, and made it onto the 4:00 return ferry. This meant that even after a stop back in Harrison to pick up what we’d left at the house, and to make and eat a quick dinner of the frozen pizzas we’d found on sale at Meier the day before, we still got into Ann Arbor before ten and I collapsed exhausted in my own bed no later than ten-thirty.

The island had been a little crowded and a little touristy, though I can’t complain about that because I was contributing just as much as everyone else. But overall it was a very pleasant and relaxing trip, and I’m glad that I went.