Mackinaw City, MI: September 5, 2023 - Island Life

We got a good, long look at the sparse Upper Peninsula on our morning drive from Munising.  A very different part of the country than I'm used to.  There are three, count-'em-three, cities with more than 10,000 people in the UP, and two of those are less than 20,000.  This is truly one of those great remote getaway spots in America.

Speaking of getaway spots, this day was to be a day for the books with our destination du jour.  Mackinac Island, which is pronounced with an "-aw" sound, the way that the city of Mackinaw looks, is yet another place we'd spotted when planning out this trip but knew very little about.  Following the pattern for the whole middle spell of this trip, it went from being a complete unknown to one of the highlights, and a high recommendation for anyone reading.

We got into town, crossing the famous Mackinac bridge which links Peninsulas Upper and Lower to one another, a little after noon and caught the next ferry to the island.  After about 15 minutes, the docks came into view:

Mackinac is small and easily walkable, which is a good thing, since they have banned all cars on the island except for emergency vehicles.  Here you'll find horse drawn carriages and about a million bikes, but no cars cluttering the streets and the air with their noise and smog.  We're off to an idyllic start.

We got off the ferry to be greeted by the dock and shimmering shoreline, on this, the last truly warm day of the trip:

We headed out onto the main street:

It was definitely charming.  The kind of place that Disney World probably takes inspiration from.  The main street stretched only a handful of blocks, and was paralleled by only one or two other roads of any substantial length before wandering off into less dense areas or nature trails.  There was also a fort that you could tour:

Although we neglected to do so.

We began with a pick-me-up at a coffee shop, then strolled to the end of main street where the view opened up a bit to the harbor:

The hill rolling up to our left was lined with colorful Victorian mansions of all varieties:

I got a bit artsy with the flowers adorning each front gate.

On the edge of town was St. Anne's church:

And just down from that, the historic Mission Church.  See if you can spot the difference:

Mackinac Island sat on yet another Great Lake; this time, Huron.  Toward the outskirts of Main Street, I took my chance to dip my hand in and be able to say I've officially touched the water of three Great Lakes:

As we came to the point, we crossed the great lawn of Mission Point Resort and sat in some of their magnificent Adirondack chairs to enjoy the lakeshore:

(knees for scale).

It really wasn't until this point that it dawned on us the best way to experience this island: by staying for multiple days in a row at one of the fancy resorts.  I know that sounds obvious, but the point being: this is not really a place you come to see the sights.  This is a place you come to relax and do very little for an extended time.

This gets me to one of my many Grand Theories of the World: the distinction between a trip and a vacation.  For me, a trip is something you do to see or experience a specific place or event.  You travel somewhere because you want to go there and see it, specifically.  You want to visit a city to see the museums, or parks, or landmarks.  You want to travel to Yosemite because the views are breathtaking.  You want to cross an ocean because you've always heard how wonderful it is to be there, and now it's time to know for yourself.

A vacation, on the other hand, is all about getting away from the hustle and bustle.  It's about relaxation and winding down.  Putting work and commitments away for a bit and stressing out about nothing.  Vacations are for resorts and remote mountain cabins.  Staying in one place and feeling guilty not at all for spending your day reading, napping, and grazing on snacks.

So it was our contention that Mackinac Island was more of a vacation spot than a trip spot.  Not that it's is not worth seeing for its own sake - there's overlap to this dichotomy of course - it's more about which direction it leans in.  And Mackinac is definitely a "sit back and put your feet up for awhile" kind of place.

After this moment of relaxing and reflecting, we continued on around the point, to the part of the shoreline with no buildings at all now:

We made our way to a great staircase:

Which lead up to a rock formation called Arch Rock:

The water was starting to look positively tropical now - pretty amazing for northern Michigan in September.

We took the path crossing the inner island back down to the town, crossing by the fort and some additional views on the way:

Toward town again, we now came in from the west side, stopping by the Grand Hotel, Mackinac's premier four-star hotel:

If you've heard of any hotel on this obscure Michigan island.........you've probably heard of this one.

We made our way back into town:

And at last stopped at one of the many, many fudge shops on this island.  I don't know why there's such a concentration, but there were like a half dozen Fudgeries on the island, and each one had multiple locations!

It was like Starbucks in Chicago, but if you can imagine it, even more dense!

More churches:

The Bark Chapel.  A church for dogs.

This was getting toward the end of our sunny day on the island, as we had to make the crucial decision to either stay on the island until a later ferry, or hop on over to the mainland and eat dinner there.  We opted for the latter, having made our full circuit of the populated part of the island.  

We got on the boat and watched the shoreline slip away:

We jetted alongside the great Mackinac Bridge:

And, after checking in to the hotel in town, ended our evening at Rusted Spoke Brewing:

This stop gave me echoes of Venice, from my visit there a thousand years ago.  A day trip by boat to an island full of wonderful things that ended up being my favorite chapter of the trip.  And this was certainly a "trip" by my lights.  I have definitely leaned toward trips in my adult life and in this blog.  One need only sample a few entries from over the years to glean the frenetic pace at which I travel.  Perhaps I need to slow down, and perhaps I will one of these days.  But right now, the goal is to see as much as I can, and you don't accomplish that by spending a week bobbing in a pool at a resort hotel.  Not that that sounds all that bad, though...

The other component to a "trip", too, is frequent movement - seeing a place for an afternoon and then getting up early the next morning to jump in the car and head on to the next destination, which is exactly what we did the day following Mackinac Island. We headed at last into the more populous Mitten of Michigan; the final phase of our grand Wishigan adventure.

Marinette, WI, and Escanaba, Munising, and Wetmore(!), MI: September 4-5, 2023 - Picture Yourself at the Pictured Rocks

Our last stop in Wisconsin, right before the border to Michigan, was in a town called Marinette.  We had traditional Wisconsin cuisine at a Culver's, then crossed the bridge into the Upper Peninsula and headed north along the coast, bidding our first state of the trip a forever goodbye.

An hour later, we arrived in another lesser-known town called Escanaba, to see an out-of-the way point of interest and break up the drive just a little bit.  Here, we checked out one of the many lighthouses along the coastal waters of Lake Michigan and its attendant bays; in this case, Sand Point Lighthouse:

There was a small informational building there:

And of course, the coast:

Which, believe it or not, was our only view of the actual Green Bay itself, off there a ways in the distance.

After the quick stop, we continued on, this time moving away from Lake Michigan to the northern side of the UP, and a new Great Lake: Lake Superior.

They told us a lot of fun facts about Lake Superior on the cruise that evening, like how it is large enough volume-wise to fit all four other Great Lakes in it combined, or how by surface area it's about as big as Austria.  Lake Superior is absurdly big.  As with Lake Michigan, it took actually being there to really appreciate the gigantic nature of these quasi-oceans.

First, though, we stopped off at the hotel to drop off our stuff, which was located in the town of - wait for it - Wetmore!

This is one of a handful of places named Wetmore in the country; our family visited Wetmore, Colorado way back during our Out West trip when I was 9, and of course I made my way to the Wetmore Trail in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  With us being so close, we had to make a visit, and happily there was a convenient hotel located right there in the town.  Disappointingly, the hotel receptionist didn't even blink when we gave our name at check-in.

Our main destination, however, was the township of Munising, where the cruise along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore was set to depart that evening.  We had chosen the sunset cruise just due to the timing of our travel day, but it also worked out to be a stunning way to end the evening.

First, a quick dinner in town:

Then, all aboard!

The cruise was timed to go an hour out, and an hour back, right as the sun set, and it was truly magical.

We passed an old, defunct lighthouse, then headed out to more open waters:

You likely have not heard of Pictured Rocks; the sites operated by the NPS but falling short of the National Park designation tend to get only a fraction of the attention of their full-status counterparts.  But this is a great place, and worth a visit.  The Upper-Peninsula portion of our trip was the least known to us prior to visiting, and the biggest surprise of the whole trip - and it may have been my favorite part.

Pictured Rocks is essentially just a long series of cliffs along the lake with interesting and colorful textures due to the mineral makeup and erosion.  It also meant for some interesting shapes sculpted by the water:

At one point, they said they were gonna take us up close...and they really meant it!

At last, we made it to Spray Falls, the turnaround point for the cruise:

The sunset portion of the Sunset cruise really kicked in as we headed back:

and it was a perfectly-timed dusk when we returned to shore.

The next morning, on our way out, we made a couple stops topside to see the views from above.  First, Miner's Rock, which we had spotted on the cruise:

Once again, a magnificent view of the vastness of Lake Superior.

We then saw Miner's Falls, close by but more in the interior of the land:

Strong Brandywine Falls vibes.  I'd link the Cuyahoga blog post again but...I already did that!  Just scroll up!

We then set off east, across the UP lengthwise this time, because believe it or not, we had yet another cruise to catch.