This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
William Golding
View of the Grand Hotel and a section of the Island from a trail above
A gift
For you, we said
And the three of us pitched in.
And took our mom on a ferry to Mackinac
Island. We dragged her around from sight to sight:
forts, shops, restaurants, on carriage rides and through gardens
It seemed like we were always climbing or descending hills
Or stairs whenever we wanted to get anywhere
But mom kept up and never complained
and we laughed and said,
“What a gift”
Fort Mackinac during a cannon firing demonstration- one of the soldiers runs to get a new match to light the cannon after the first one failed
Success on the second try! The ground shook.
Arch Rock Trail winding through the woods in the Mackinac Island State Park
Arch Rock in the early morning light
Beautiful dark trillium in bloom in the Secret Garden on The Grand Hotel grounds
Bridge over a river of grape hyacinths in the Secret Garden overlooked by the Grand Hotel above
Masses of tulips bloomed everywhere on the island.
If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
For those of you who don’t know about Mackinac Island, it is a small Island where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet off the northern coast of Michigan’s lower peninsula. They don’t allow cars on the island, so transportation is by horse drawn carriage, bicycle or on foot. If you’d like to know more about the island and it’s history, check out their website here.
If I were to go again, I would love to run the entire circumference of the Island (I think it’s about 8 miles) and spend a lot more time exploring the natural areas of the state park, which makes up about 80 percent of the island. The carriage tour was fabulous, funny and gave our feet a welcome rest. The only stop on the tour I would recommend seeing on your own instead is Arch Rock. It’s much better to see without a crowd. That is only possible in the early morning, or in the evening after the tours stop running. I would also definitely recommend seeking out the Secret Garden on the grounds of the Grand Hotel. It was magical. I don’t know what it’s like at other times of the year, but it wasn’t too crowded for our early season visit and the flowers were blooming wildly everywhere.
This was the first trip my sisters and my mom and I have ever taken together as adults, with just the four of us. Mom flew in from Texas, my sister Rita drove up from Alabama, and I drove across the state to spend the night in Lake Orion, Michigan, at my sister Becky’s house, on a Sunday. Monday morning, we rose early and piled into Becky’s car for the four-hour drive to Mackinaw City, where we took a ferry ride to Mackinac Island. It was fun right from the start. We walked and shopped, tried the famous fudge, visited historic buildings and gardens, took an afternoon carriage tour and got dressed up for dinner every night at the Grand Hotel. We played cards after dinner in the trophy room, gave each other lots of grief and laughed until we cried. We went to bed late and got up early. It was exhausting and absolutely lovely. We’re already thinking about the next trip we’ll take together.
Thank you so much for being here. See you next week!
My crew of fellow troublemakers: from the left: me, my sisters, Becky and Rita, and my mom, Janet.
No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
Elbert Hubbard
P.S. The poem was meant to be a “shape” poem (a diamond) which is a bit of a risk because I’m not sure if the format will come through when this page is converted to email by th messaging system.