18-19 August 2014

Mackinac Island was on Susan’s bucket list since the first days of planning. The island has been stopped in time with only horse drawn vehicles and bicycles for transportation. (Well they cheat in the snow, there are truck plows for the island and the full time residents all have snowmobiles) It is a combination of old world charm and the tourist trade. It’s been a vacation destination since the Indians in the 1600′s.

We got off the dock in DeTour about 9:30 AM. It was going to be a long day with a trip of about 35 miles to get to Mackinac Island. Our days of little 10-15 mile jumps are done, from here to Chicago it’s 30+ miles between places.

The wind started picking up about two hours into the trip and by the third hour we were in a 12 knot wind. The waves were not that bad except for the “every 12th roller wave” that pushed the boat sideways. Not the best sailing weather, but the forecast for the next day was solid rain, so we took the chance.

We got into our dock a little before 2PM and quickly buttoned upthe boat and headed into town. First thing I noticed were all of the horse drawn carriages. Two people, 4 people, carts with 18 people. Horses everywhere. But they were outnumbered by the people and the bicycles. It reminded me of Ocean City Maryland with the throngs of people and bikes on the boardwalk.

Susan was well prepared for our visit. She got us to a carriage ride that came in two parts. The first part through town and the second part back through the state park.

The ride through town was nice. We got to see all the nice buildings off of the main street. There is a small hospital and an even smaller post office. Since all the people have a PO box the joke was “Only US post office that never delivered a piece of mail”.

Our cart held 12 people and was drawn by 2 horses. There were many rest breaks to give the horses a chance to recover dragging us all up the steep hills. The steepest one lead up to “The Grand Hotel”. It is a 300 room, 3 story hotel that was built in the late 1800′s. It is huge and has a front porch with “more rockers than Cracker Barrel”. Across the street is a 9 hole golf course and the back nine is a 10 minute carriage ride away. While you can have golf carts on the course, you can’t have them between courses or on the street.

At the top of the hill is “The Grand Hotel” livery barns and a gift shop where you change carriages for the park tour. We got off and headed to the next building over which was one of the two butterfly exhibits on the island. “Wings of Mackinac” is a small building attached to a long greenhouse. You get to walk along a brick path with soothing music and bubbling fountains while looking at the 100′s of butterflies.

When I walked in one came down and landed on my hat brim. I was wondering why everyone was looking at me until Susan said what was going on. It was a beautiful dark blue and black color. There should be a good picture in the Mackinac album.

From the butterflies we headed over to the stables to check out the carriages and tack that are used by “The Grand Hotel”. The carriages are very fancy and well preserved.

Next was to get on a carriage drawn by three horses and a cart that carried 20 people. We went on a 5 mile jaunt through the woods. We saw Skull Cave, where the indians put some of their dead. The rife range, a 1000 yard cleared stretch of land that the soldiers practiced on. We also saw three cemetery locations, Protestant, Catholic, and the Army. The arched gate to the Catholic cemetary was the best, since the worn path goes around the gate. The reason is they measured to make sure the hearse would fit in between the posts, but when building the arch forgot that the driver sits up high.

We stopped for 5 minutes at Arch Rock, a natural limestone arch close to the waters edge. It’s pretty cool how nature was able to carve the center out. If you go past the arch you can see a message in the water below. Someone has taken rocks out into the water to spell messages out.

On the return trip we learned how they mined limestone (build really hot fires on top of the rock and douse it with cold lake water to crack it) for the churches in town.

We saw the front entrance of the fort and some people got off there. At the Governor’s summer place more people got off so it was only Chelsea the driver and us. She asked where we were staying and we talked about the loop, she had heard of it before. We chatted on the last section of the ride and gave us the latest in town gossip. Of the three drivers we had that day she was the best.

At the junction terminal, we checked out the antique carriage collection that has the hearse and the fire pumper (and it turns out they have a fire department with fire trucks, so much for “everything is horses”). I bought a half pound of fudge for us to try.

We swapped carriages again back to town. We were soon on the main street, and the end of the carriage ride is in front of the Mustang Grill. Karma was speaking to us, so we went in to have a quick beer and some fries to warm up from the cold day.

From there we walked the rest of the length of the shopping district. It consists mostly of fudge places, gift shops, places to eat, carriage ride tours and places to rent bikes. A lot like the boardwalk, except on both sides of the street.

One of the places had a pretty good selection of beers on tap. We were both full from the fries, so we had appetizers (crab cake and a chicken pot pie). I did four beer tasting of some Michigan beers. They were pretty good, but I’m glad I have Canadian beer still back on the boat.

Once back at the marina, Susan headed back to the boat and I set out to meet the Looper boats that were there. I was able to talk to the crews of Nuclear Fishin, Limelight and Lollygagger. They are all in various stages of the Loop, but Nuclear Fishin is out of the lower Chesapeake Bay so they are just a little closer than we are to being done.

It was bumpy sleeping over night. The winds had stopped somewhat but since they were blowing from the Southeast it and the waves were coming into the marina. Boaters had complained about the waves from the multiple ferry boats, but they are done at 9:30 and the bouncing went on all night.

Tuesday morning it rained until about ll AM, but stopped in time for us to walk up to “The Grand Hotel” for the lunch buffet. To be honest, yesterday I wasn’t too thrilled with all the horse manure that was everywhere. Naive me thought “Yay it rained, it will wash it away!”. Whoa Nellie, not so fast. What the rain does is spread it evenly across the road making it slippery to walk on. With visions of slipping on the hill and falling face first into the street we sallied forth.

Our first stop was the “Little Church” that was built in the 1800′s out of island limestone. It was very pretty and has some very nice stained glass windows. There is a huge (30′ diameter) stained glass window above the alter. It wasn’t lighted, so the pictures are pretty dark.

Sticking to the sidewalk as much as possible we made it to “The Grand Hotel”. We paid our $10 fee and sauntered like we were guests up to the porch. I could picture my Grandmother Gray as a young adult spending time here in the 1920′s

In another post wrote about our food orgy at the lunch buffet.It was really good and something that we would both do another time. After recovering in the rockers we set off towards the fort.

We passed the Governor’s summer home. It’s a very nice house, and we were told that the family does spend time there in the summer. When they are not there you can tour the house from 9AM – 1PM, but our gluttony got in the way of that happening.

The fort was our next stop. It was very cool, all of the rooms are like they were in the 1890′s. There is also a team of docents dressed up in uniforms of the day. They do a rifle shooting demonstration and a cannon firing. While the Fort Mackinac was a desirable post in the 1890′s with it protecting mostly a vacation community, I’m not sure I would want to live there. The docents were good about answering questions and talking to the crowds.

The amusing thing was they have the records of the last men that served at the post. I was surprised by the number of court martials that happened. I was surprised by the number of men that died because of Syphilis. “Contracted during service but not in the line of duty” was an oft repeated notation.

From the fort we headed down hill and stopped in the Bark Chappel where the clergy spent time trying to convert the Indians to Christianity. Looked like it would be pretty cold in the winter.

Next stop was Ste. Anne Catholic Church that was built in 1873. There had been a number of other Ste Anne’s, the oldest on the island was 1743, but it burned down. The current church is huge and very ornate. It has stained glass windows on both sides with the stations of the cross depicted on them. The ceiling of the sanctuary soars above the pews.

From the church we walked back towards the boat. We saw a couple leaving a bike place on electric fold-able bikes! When we inquired we were told that 1) They belonged to the people, they were not rentals, 2) They brought them onto the island on their boat and 3)They were illegal on the island because they were powered. Evidently there is a $100 fine. To get a permit you need to have a doctors letter and file an application with the town and have it approved. I’m going to guess that there is also a fee for doing that. (I did some research and motor vehicles are allowed from 1 November until the second weekend in May, but must yield to the horses)

When we got back to the boat there was an impromptu party on the main wall. It was a group of boaters that spend their summers in the area, they all happened to be together at the same time. Two of them had guitars and a third had a drum so they were doing 70′s songs. Very festive.

The boat was still rocking, so we settled in for another night of being gently tossed by the waves.

(Oh and I left my shoes outside!)