Category: Travel

On Labor Day, the Mackinac Bridge Authority in Michigan closes the bridge from 6:30 a.m. – noon. Brave pedestrians walk across the bridge. Jonathan participated the past few years. (A one-way walk, plus all of the extra walking involved for walking from one’s drop-off spot to one’s pick-up spot, ended up being 7 miles for Jonathan.) Last year he crossed the bridge and then crossed back! (I’m so proud of him.)

While Jonathan walked this year, I took the first ferry of the day to Mackinac Island. This is the earliest that I’ve ever been to the island.

Mackinac Island was a sacred spot to the local Native American tribes. It’s now a tourist attraction.

European settlers colonized it. An Astor traded furs here. (Same family as the guy who went down on the Titanic generations later.) The island now hosts two old forts, three cemeteries, many Victorian houses, and the Grand Hotel. (And a Starbucks!)

And horses. Lots and lots of horses. (“HORSE” is pretty much the entire theme of this island.) And bicycles.

Motorized vehicles are banned here except for emergency vehicles. That’s why folks pay the big bucks to come here. Tourists sightsee by bicycle, horse, or walking.

If you’re staying overnight on the island, you either schlep your luggage to your hotel or get it delivered by horse or bicycle. Same with any souvenirs that you buy. Same with the food that you eat. Same with the food that the horses eat. Same with the ingredients used to make the fudge that the tourists buy. (There are a lot of fudge shops on the island.) Same with the alcohol. It’s expensive to consume things and experiences on the island.

My in-laws used to visit as day-trippers every few years. (My husband’s parents used to live in St. Ignace, one of the towns on the mainland where one can park and catch a ferry to the island.) My father-in-law likes to joke around family and friends about the smells of the horse shit mixing with the smells of the fudge.

I’ve never spent the night “on island.” I first came here as a day-tripper 20 years ago this summer. However, this month’s Labor Day trip was my first since before 2020.

I personally find the island stressful when it’s crowded. The island is crowded every day that I ever visited, which are days with nice weather during tourist season. (Funny how that happens!) However, the crowds vary depending on the time of day and the day of the week. The only reason that I was able to take any photos of the “main drag” this year was because I got there as early as I possibly could. I arrived on the same ferry as about a dozen hotel employees. (I am under the impression that they were housekeeping staff who lived on the mainland.)

I wanted to show my blog readers what Mackinac Island looks like in the summer before “all of the rest of us day-tripper tourists” arrive on Labor Day.

So, keep in mind that I took all of these photos within an hour of stepping off of the morning’s first ferry on Labor Day. Don’t expect downtown Mackinac Island to be this empty when you arrive midday for your visit.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that I (as a tourist) witnessed a lot of service and tourism industry employees up bright and early at work on Labor Day.

After I took all of these photos, I booked a rather expensive carriage tour around the island on the first tour of the day. To make a long story short, the carriage ride was in two parts. For the first part, I had a Romanian carriage driver / tour guide. I learned that he was a university student and he was in a program that permitted him to work in the United States for three months each year, and then travel for a fourth month. He is only eligible for this program while he is a student. Next year, he will graduate and he will no longer be eligible for this program. He drove us past the traditional tourist trap staples such as the Grand Hotel and the Grand Hotel’s golf course. Some poor little girl wiped out on her bicycle in front of our carriage while we were at the Grand Hotel. (The roadway there is a steep hill.) She cried. Her parents were there and she got back on her bike. I saw the same little girl walking around on a different part of the island several hours later, so I like to believe that she was fine. It must have been mortifying for her to fall like that in front of a full carriage, though.

Then our Romanian driver / tour guide drove us past the dormitories where many of the service industry employees reside and past the stable where the horses reside.

I learned a lot about horses on both the first and second parts of the carriage tour. I forgot most of it already. I do remember that the Romanian driver / tour guide finds it necessary to rest his horses behind trees and shrubs when he is on the section of roadway that borders the Grand Hotel’s golf course. This is to prevent golf balls from hitting the horses, causing them to bolt. I learned several details about the Romanian guide’s personal life. I learned absolutely nothing about the personal life of the driver / guide that we had for the second part of the tour.

The tour company had a “moderator” who managed our transfer from the first carriage and the first part of the tour, through a building that had a souvenir shop and concession stand, and onto a second carriage for the second part of the tour. I learned that this man lived in St. Ignace. He told us that if he did not go to work on Labor Day, he would otherwise be stuck at home all day due to the traffic backups that result from the closing of the Mackinac Bridge.

After Jonathan walked across the Mackinac Bridge from St. Ignace to Mackinaw City, he took a ferry from the Mackinaw City side to the island. (The two ferry companies offer service from both sides of the bridge.) The ferry that Jonathan rode to the island almost wiped out two small power boats that stopped directly in front of that ferry. Also, a freighter passed in the shipping channel on one side of this whole scene, so the ferry couldn’t swerve in that direction to avoid the power boats. Then Jonathan watched sailboats and other small watercraft leave the island’s marina until I finished my carriage tour. (Jonathan is a boat nerd.)

By then, downtown Mackinac Island had a lot more people out and about. We had lunch at the Pink Pony. We waited almost an hour for our table, but it was okay because we haven’t eaten there since before 2020. Also, we overheard the hostess tell patrons who came in after us that the wait was now one and a half hours. The Pink Pony is one of those places where you have to put your name on a list even to be seated at the bar. Jonathan watched the bartender confiscate bar chairs from “patrons” who stole them from the bar in order to join their friends at a table. (“Fine, I guess we’ll just stand then!” said the now chair-less guests.) A bunch of other patrons wore tee shirts announcing that they completed the bridge walk.

I shopped for overpriced souvenirs. (The souvenirs arrived on the island by ferry. Then I purchased the souvenirs and took them off of the island by ferry.) We returned to St. Ignace on the ferry. By then I had reached my limit with crowds and the smell of horses.

Jonathan confessed that the ferry rides to and from the island contribute significantly to his enjoyment of these trips. I agree. For several years, we brought our bicycles and pedaled around the island’s perimeter. We toured Fort Mackinac once. One year, I toured the Grand Hotel. (The Grand Hotel charges non-guests $10 per adult and $5 per child to walk up on the porch and enter the hotel in order to keep out the “unwashed masses.”) Other years were more low key. Jonathan likes to look at the boats in the marina. For several summers, we visited the island during the Race to Mackinac. This is an annual sailboat race (in July) from Chicago (sponsored by the Chicago Yacht Club) to the Round Island Lighthouse / Channel at Mackinac Island. So, Jonathan sat on the beach at Windermere Point to watch boats cross the finish line for several hours. (I think that Jonathan watched the race while I toured the Grand.)

I read a lot of beach reads about the island of Nantucket off of the coast of Massachusetts by Elin Hilderbrand. I like to think of Mackinac Island as a sort of “Nantucket of the Midwest.” Except with no automobiles. And probably with more horses.

Postscript: Here are some photos that I took of the Mackinac Island Area (Round Island Light House, Mackinac Bridge at Sunset, etc.) several years ago.