{"id":1562,"date":"2015-06-24T22:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T22:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=1562"},"modified":"2018-09-08T02:00:28","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T02:00:28","slug":"wednesday-june-24-2015-mackinac-island-and-traverse-city-mi-125-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/06\/24\/wednesday-june-24-2015-mackinac-island-and-traverse-city-mi-125-miles\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, June 24, 2015 , Mackinac Island and Traverse City, MI (125 miles)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We got up bright and early (in fact, I got up too early, about 5 am, with a
\nstomachache, but I felt better within the hour) and headed for the earliest
\nboat to get to Mackinac Island. It was still rather chilly so we sat inside
\non the 20-minute trip across. The island is small, with an 8-mile (13 km)
\ncircumference, and it had historic significance during the time of the
\nFrench fur trade in the 17th century, but then also in the war of 1812.
\nThen the tourists came, in the 1850s, and never stopped coming: in the early\u00a019th century, there were multiple hotels and many Victorian board in houses\u00a0already, and then the island became a national park for a while and it was\u00a0decided that there shouldn’t be any cars allowed on the island. There still\u00a0aren’t any, but tourists come in droves (15,000 a day during the high
\nseason), even as the year-round population is only 900 and some. And
\nbecause that is so much more unusual than in Germany, where several island\u00a0are without cars, lots of people check it out–only to either rent a bike at\u00a0horrendous rates, or take a tour in a horse-drawn carriage, also for lots of\u00a0money. We opted for the cheap and obvious option–we walked all over he\u00a0island instead, starting out with the 8-mile loop around the island. With\u00a0detours, even!<\/p>\n

We had to make our way out of the super touristy harbor\/city area with its
\nkitschy fake Victorian saloons etc. first, but then the walk was peaceful
\nand wonderful. We climbed up a bunch of stairs to a lookout point and arch
\nformation, but otherwise, the road just circled the island at beach level,
\nand the views were stunning, with clear water, lots of seagulls, lush
\nvegetation on the coast side, and many cairns that everyone builds with the
\nrocks here. It took us about 3 1\/2 hours to go around, starting at about 8
\nam, and we had a wonderful time. We had a small handful of runners and many\u00a0bicycles pass us, but very few others were walking beyond a mile from
\naforementioned trusty city center. So it was very quiet, and all around
\nfabulous. Toward the last two miles, there were more Victorian buildings
\nagain, and a couple if cool rock formations, plus we finally began to see
\nthe carriages, which tend to stay in the built-up part of the island to talk
\nabout its history and culture.<\/p>\n

We then found ourselves some reasonably priced quesadillas for lunch, and
\nexplored the center of the island a little bit more–another lookout, the
\ncemetery, a shortcut hiking trail, and eventually the historic homes just
\nbehind Tourist Alley, including the absolutely enormous Grand Hotel, which\u00a0apparently boasts the longest porch ever built–not to mention “guards” that\u00a0make sure hapless tourists don’t enter the grounds without paying $10 for\u00a0the privilege of looking at bombastic Victorian resort architecture! Silly. \u00a0We had walked nearly 12 miles total by the time we were back by the docks,\u00a0and we dutifully bought a piece of fudge to eat–somehow, the island became\u00a0famous for its fudge, and several candy stores had people making it on\u00a0marble-topped counters. It was fun to watch them and the fudge we did buy\u00a0at JoAnn’s fudge shop was excellent. We then waited for our boat departure\u00a0at 3 pm, and since it was now gorgeous, we were able to sit on the upper\u00a0deck of the boat and soak in the views of he straits, the island, the\u00a0mainland, and the Mackinac bridge, a famous suspension bridge built in 1957\u00a0across the straits.<\/p>\n

We then got back in our car and drove back into “regular Michigan,” to
\nTraverse City in the Northwestern corner of the peninsula, where the “little
\nfinger” of the mitten-shaped state is. We saw lots of orchards, for which
\nthe area is famous (tart cherries in particular), and a good bit more lake
\nshore as well as many smaller lakes. It took about two hours to get to our
\nhotel in Traverse City, where we’ll be for two nights, and thankfully, there
\nwas a Bob Evans restaurant close by. We try to avoid chain restaurants, but
\nI have fond memories of my very first meal when coming to BGSU in 1989, with\u00a0the nice couple that helped me out when I was stranded at the Toledo
\nairport. We had a nice home-style meal–I still like Bob Evans better than
\nthe comparable Perkins–and walked the half-block back to the motel to call it a day.<\/p>\n

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We got up bright and early (in fact, I got up too early, about 5 am, with a stomachache, but I felt better within the hour) and headed for the earliest boat to get to Mackinac Island. It was still rather chilly so we sat inside on the 20-minute trip across. The island is small, … Continue reading “Wednesday, June 24, 2015 , Mackinac Island and Traverse City, MI (125 miles)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roadtrip2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1572,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}