Wayside_Wisdom Heard Along the Way
Mackinac Island, Michigan (Click on pictures to enlarge; click on BACK to return to the story.)
A VISIT TO YESTERDAY
MONDAY, JUNE 12 -Did you ever wish you could go back in time for a visit?
Well, today we did just that! This morning we took the
9:00 am ferry from Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island. The ferry trip over gave us
a spectacular view of the Mackinac Bridge, "Mighty Mac" as it is affectionately
known around here. It is the longest single span suspension bridge in the world
and connects Lower Michigan with the Upper Peninsula across the straits between
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.
A
half-hour ferry ride brought us to the harbor of Mackinac Island where we were
greeted by a pair of welcoming lighthouses. What a lovely and peaceful little
place Mackinac Island is! When we alighted from the ferry, we knew we had
traveled back in time. The only motorized vehicles permitted on the island are
emergency vehicles, snowmobiles and lawn mowers. All other travel must be done
on foot, by bicycle or in horse drawn vehicles. This sets the tempo for a slow
and relaxed pace all over the island, which is about four square miles
in size.
We walked the main streets of town all morning, enjoying various views of
Lake Huron which surrounds the island on all sides. The houses
look like 19th century transplants with their ornate cupolas and
large porches with elaborately carved railings! We also toured one of the
elegant resort areas on the shore, admiring their tiny golf course from a
shoreline path around the outside.
We
also admired the elegant Grand Hotel from a distance. It sits majestically on a
hillside overlooking the lake waters below, surrounded by elegant flower
gardens, walking trails and a large bicycle parking lot. Enclosed carriages,
embossed with the hotel name, come and go up its scenic driveway, driven by
smartly uniformed staff. We understand that it costs $12 per person to tour
their gardens – we didn’t even ask what it costs to take a peek into the hotel
lobby!
The weather was quite cloudy when we first arrived on the island. But, as the day wore on, the sun came out. Despite the sun, the cold wind from the lake kept the air quite cool until mid-afternoon.
The
island is known for the beauty and variety of its lilacs – some 18 different
species in that small area! We were fortunate to be there just after the peak of
their season and could still enjoy the colors and perfumes of many of them.
Other flowers also flourish on the island: tulips, dahlias, marigolds, petunias
and flowering trees of several different kinds. The gardens, flowerbeds and
plantings at the Grand Hotel are completely dug up and re-planted 3 times every
season so there are always healthy and colorful blooms to be seen around it!
We didn’t take time to explore reconstructed British Fort Mackinac on the hill above town. But, in the afternoon, after our lunch on a patio near the shore, we took a carriage tour.
The carriage driver did a good job mixing historical and informative
narration with her corny jokes. The team of horses which pulled our
carriage around town were Percherons weighing, the driver reported, about 1700
pounds each. They pulled our rubber-tired carriage with its load of 20 people
slowly up the hill out of town to the Carriage Museum on Surrey Hill. After we
had toured the museum – and souvenir shops! – as long as we wanted, we climbed
aboard a larger carriage, pulled by 3
Belgian
horses, which carried 35 people. Each of those horses weighed about 2300 pounds
and was capable of pulling 3 times its own weight. (We wondered how large a
population of horses it takes to operate two sets of tourist carriages, saddle
horses and "drive your own buggy" horses which are available for rent, not to
mention all the horses needed to pull the street sweeper, the trash wagon, the
delivery wagons, the wagons to deliver luggage to hotels in town, etc!)
The 3-horse hitch took us on a leisurely tour of the forested State Park area
in the inland part of the island. The woods is quite dense and the
terrain quite hilly. We made a short stop at the Arch Rock, a fascinating rock
formation overlooking the lake far below. At Fort Mackinac we stopped briefly to
allow passengers who wanted to tour the fort to leave the carriage. Then our
3-horse hitch returned us to Surrey Hill where we caught a 2-horse carriage back
into town. The whole tour took about 1 ˝ to 2 hours and was delightful.
After an afternoon ice cream cone, we caught the 4:30 ferry back to the mainland and bid "Good-by" to Mackinac Island where yesterday is alive and well. We arrived back at our camp site near Mackinaw City on the mainland about 5:30 pm. What an enjoyable day!
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An additional note: Is it Mackinaw or Mackinac? (Both spellings are pronounced "aw") The area was originally called Michinnimakinong by the Ottawa and Ojibwa Indians. That word was shortened to Mackinac by the French. The British wrote it as it was pronounced. Thus, the spelling "Mackinaw." Officially it is Mackinaw City, Michigan, and Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Island.