October 15 - Mackinac Island, Michigan

The day dawned cool but sunny, and we hustled thru breakfast to make the 9 o’clock boat over to Mackinac Island. The ride over was fairly smooth and in less than 20 minutes we were at the docks in the center of the town of Mackinac. The Schepler folks offered a Mackinac Island Visitor’s Guide that included maps for $1, and we bought it to plan out our walking route. In summer there is a Volksmarch on Mackinac Island, but that had ended on September 30th, so in choosing a route to walk around the island we were on our own. We decided to walk up straight north thru the middle of the island and then curve around to the east side and return to the town along a shoreline road.

We first walked down the 4-block main street to Fort Mackinac, which sits on a bluff overlooking the harbor, and took the road just to the left of the fort up and over the bluff. The main street is a melange of 10-15 fudge shops interspersed with gift shops and restaurants. The architecture has been kept as it originally was in the late 1800s or at least as a close facsimile thereto, so the building styles are consistently cute or even pretty. One of the main draws of the island is that fact that no cars or motorcycles are allowed, so the streets are populated with walkers, bicyclists, and horse-drawn carriages. The latter are certainly quaint but I think seeing the horses urinate and defecate on the street should cure any sane person of the wish to return to the “good old days” before automobiles. I must admit, however, that it was so nice to walk on the streets without the worry of being run over by crazy drivers—I figured the horses would probably have enough sense to avoid running me down unless they were frightened or I did something really stupid.

At the top of the bluff the road fortunately leveled off and continued back along the plateau in the center of the island. We passed a large cemetery that had both Roman Catholic and Protestant sections to it, and in the cemetery Monika spotted a maple that was just gorgeous in its yellow fall colors. The sunlight was streaming thru the leaves making them almost luminescent, as if the tree were lit from inside and glowing, and I only hoped we could capture it with a picture.

We turned right on Fort Holmes road to get to an overlook where we had a great view of the trees in their fall colors, a large spike of rock called “Sugarloaf”, the deep blue waters of lake beyond, and the bright blue sky above. Coming back we branched off onto the Morning Snack Trail—an eponymous name I thought. This entire plateau is crisscrossed with well-marked trails, which gives a walker almost an infinite variety of possible side routes. Some of these trails are quite steep, however, so the walker should only take them if he or she is so inclined, so to speak (Sorry!).

We then zigzagged a bit to Crooked Tree Road and turned left to get to British Landing Road, which we took down to the northwest shore of the island, branching off to the left on the Lydia Trail just to walk in the woods a bit more. A short way in on the Lydia Trail we found some abandoned apple trees and picked up a few very green and, as it turned out, very tart apples that we added to our evening meal menu.

When we finally arrived at the shore we were disappointed to find no bathrooms available. Although the sign at the Nature Center said they were usable, the bathrooms were locked up tighter than a drum. So we continued on the road, starting to make a great clockwise circle around the perimeter of the island. Since the clouds had cleared off and we had brilliant sunshine, along the way we were treated to many nice views of the coast with the whitecaps crashing against the island shore.

Our one diversion from the perimeter road was to walk a short little nature trail around a little pond just south of the shore road. The informational plaques along this trail explained the different flora that could be found in the wetlands just inside the coastline. I saw an evergreen tree that I thought was dying, but the plaque explained that this species loses its leaves in the fall. Who knew? Really, though, the name “evergreen” is quite misleading for this tree, but I suppose that “almost always evergreen” or “evergreen except when it’s not” or “spring thru fall evergreen” are much too awkward to be useful.

As we left the nature trail we met another couple walking the same direction at about the same pace, Bob and Shirley, so we chatted with them for the rest of the way back to town about our respective jobs, families, and the like. Along the way we saw Arch Rock from the bottom, which looked to me like a very graceful natural arch made from limestone or some other light-colored rock.

When we arrived back in town, we saw some very nice churches and homes (mansions?) on that part of the main street and then we started to search for a place to eat. Being a resort area, most of the restaurants were quite high-priced, but at last we found a place with some fairly cheap hamburgers and ate there. I rationalized the high fat content of the meal with the excuse that we had walked about 3 ½ hours and surely deserved some nourishment by that point. We sat at the back of the restaurant overlooking the harbor and watching the water and the boats bobbing at anchor while we ate was very relaxing.

After lunch we retraced the morning route along the main street, but this time we visited pretty much every gift shop that offered any end-of-the-season discounts, which was most of them. We found 2 nice packs of playing cards with Mackinac pictures on them for $1 apiece, a sewing kit for $2, a hard-backed book with many stories about the Great Lakes for $12, and some half-priced peanut brittle ($2.95 a half pound) for a dessert course. We just finished the last gift shop in time to catch our 3 o’clock boat back to St. Ignace.

Wanting to get some pictures of the harbor lighthouses, I climbed to the front of the upper deck as we slowly motored out of the harbor. I did in fact get the lighthouse pictures, but as we hit the waves that had built up in the brisk afternoon winds my upper deck perch turned into a real version of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” and I couldn’t get back down. In fact, we were pitching and swaying so badly that I had to hold on to either the seat beside me or the railing just to stay in my seat, and I just didn’t even think about trying to walk back to the stairs at the stern and go inside.

The waves were so rough and we were crashing into them at such a speed that spray was reaching as high as my perch on the top deck. I couldn’t even let go of the railing long enough to put the camera away and protect it from the spray. But then I saw some interesting shots of the Mackinac Bridge, so I waited for the lulls in the pounding waves to free one hand to briefly take a picture before I had to re-grab my supports. I must admit it was fun, but what it would be like in even rougher weather I can’t even begin to imagine. It’s only fair to warn those folks who might be trying to retrace some of these walks that they should carefully consider their susceptibility to seasickness and the prevailing wind and waves before taking the boat trip over to the island. Another consideration is, naturally, cost—the ferry ride costs $16 and everything on the island is VERY expensive—Monika thought that many of the items on sale for ½ price in the island stores were still much too expensive for folks like us.

Back on shore we drove a couple blocks back to the Ojibwa Cultural Museum and had a very pleasant hour in there. The collective and cooperative aspects of the culture were communistic (note: small “c” not big “C”) and sharing was performed by “gifting” goods to each other. The norm I found particularly interesting was that in times of want the Ojibwa were supposed to become more generous with their gifts to each other rather than less. That might help ensure mutual survival in a harsh climate and makes sense from a cultural evolution point of view, but it is quite different from the dominant “What’s in it for me, Mac?” ethos in current western culture.

A display case at the very end of the museum documented the changes in cultural artifacts after contact with Europeans. The curators made the interesting point that some European trade items were incorporated into Ojibwa culture while others were rejected. Metal fishing hooks, for example, were much more durable and less brittle than the original bone ones, and so were enthusiastically adopted by Ojibwa fishermen. European flour grinders, on the other hand, ground flour too fine to use with traditional cooking methods and were uniformly rejected despite the fact that the old stone grinding method involved high effort and time. Curators also made the point that the Europeans had to change their lifestyle more to survive on this harsh frontier than they changed the lifestyle of the Ojibwa, at least at first.

The Ojibwa cultural artifacts were also quite beautiful. I was particularly struck by the beautiful basketry and embroidery on display. One display discussed the basket construction process and I was interested to learn that they had made the lathes for the baskets by de-layering Black Ash trees. The Ojibwa hammered narrow slices cut from the tree to separate the growth layers into strips suitable for weaving baskets, a laborious process to be sure. We purchased a small sample of Ojibwa craft for our trailer and drove home to hang it up and have our usual simple dinner.

Monika finished crocheting a Dutch boy and girl, she called it “filet work” because you make designs with the open and closed squares that make the pattern. I don’t understand it, but that’s just one of life’s many mysteries and it surely looks nice on our couch. We also continued our cribbage contest—this time she eked out a win by 1 point at the end and the Combined Cribbage Campaign (CCC) was now 2 to 2.