Day 42 - A Step Back in Time - Mackinaw Island

Day 42 - Mackinaw Island - October 1, 2014 Wednesday


Mackinaw Island was so much more than I had envisioned. If I could make it possible for my family to live there I would. It is everything a childhood is made of!  The island was much bigger than I imagined with many houses and hotels, restaurants, and stores. 

The first thing I noticed when I arrived were horses, carriages, and hundreds upon hundreds of bicycles. Whipping past us on the street came a bellboy on a bicycle laden with suitcases. He was quite confident as he took a corner at a high speed and carried on past us with his baggages. The sight was not the last,of its kind. Apparently, this is how suitcases are delivered for some patrons of hotels.

We began our jaunt down the street peering in windows at decadent fudge and other tasty morsels. Fudge is one of the main tourist attractions of Mackinaw Island. It began because apparently there was a need for a candy for the tourists that would not melt in the children’s hands, and since fudge takes a very high temperature to dissolve, it was the perfect choice. There are now reports of twelve to twenty-eight fudge merchants on the island. 

Murdocks Fudge  - the Original Fudge Shoppe

Even Bicycles to Church

The Grand Hotel is a famous establishment that was constructed in the late 19th century in 93 days! They advertised to have the building built and hundreds of people signed up for the job purporting to have experience, but it was discovered this was really not true. Among the flaws noted were floors and walls not being level, and many of the columns do not reach the ceilings. A huge number of the workers had no construction experience whatsoever.

The hotel advertises itself as having the world's largest porch.The Grand Hotel is noted for a number of well-known visitors, including five US presidents: Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, Russian president, Dmitri Medevdev, inventor Thomas Edison, and author Mark Twain. Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph on the front porch, and Mark Twain would give readings.

I took the children on a horse and wagon tour of the island, and I am so glad that I did. I wasn’t sure when I realized it was going to cost $106 for all of us, and I thought it might be a bit nippy as the wind was blowing hard that day. I bit the bullet, lay down the cash, and got in line. Israel was happy to discover they provided thick woolen blankets to wrap around our chilly bodies during the drive. We clambered into a row squeezing five of our six together. We could have put Isaiah in with us to create more body heat, but he was happy where he was, as he had an outside seat. 

Our driver drove us through the town and then up around the back streets sharing with us history and facts and telling fitting jokes as he went. We learned so much about the island, including a story of the youngest child in the graveyard. She was the daughter of a family on the island, and crossing the ice bridge one day, she fell through and drowned. Her father collected all the Christmas trees in the town that Christmas and used them to line the safe path so that no more tragedies would take place. This tradition is practiced to this day. 

There is also only one doctor on the island, and he lives there year round. In the summer months there are various student doctors or practitioners from other countries that come to practice. We saw his house and on the door it read the name of the doctor and PRIVATE. 

We were driven to the Grand Stables and we saw of the horses that were stabled there for driving the Grand Hotel guests around. Later in the day we had the opportunity to see two of the horses that had been in the stables harnessed and pulling the Grand Carriage through town with a driver in a top hat. 

Grand Hotel Carriage

The Island Hearse

We visited the carriage museum and were able to see the funeral hearse that is still used on the island the carriage that carried the ransom for the first famous kidnapping in the States. 

There are six to eight hundred horses on the island normally, but at this time of year many of them have been shipped away for the winter to an area north of the Mackinaw Bridge. There they will run wild for the winter and grow thick coats, and come spring they are brought back and harnessed and driven. They love to drive and live longer than most horses of their breed because of their excellent lifestyle and good exercise. Some of the horses that have been retired around twenty have gone off their feeding due to melancholy brought on by lack of work, and these horses have been reintroduced to their jobs and their health has resumed.

The Ransom Carriage

Employee Parking

Arch Rock

The Mackinaw Fort was great to look through. We had a chance to see a rifle demonstration and a cannon being primed and shot off. The soldiers explained what was going on and the history behind the events.

The Fort

We went to visit a butterfly conservatory that also had reptiles and insects. The conservatory was so humid that it was hard to take pictures. The atmosphere was that of the rain forest because the most exquisite butterflies danced past us and even landed on our bodies! The colours were bright blues, oranges, purples, reds, greens, and more, and their many of their bodies sparkled or were luminescent. Some were rather ordinary, but really not too many. The majority were unbelievable. Some were as large as four or five inches across!

The Most Magnificent Horses!

Main Street

A Mackinaw Love Story

As I was walking downtown, I saw the sweetest thing. I may have been wrong in my interpretation, but I like my story, so that is what I will give you.  There was a man on a bicycle standing out front of a restaurant chatting with a girl wearing a serving apron. She was clearly taking a few moments away from her work to chat with her beau. Suddenly, whipping down the street, came two young men on bikes calling in jest over their shoulder to their friend, the besotted boy, “Let’s go!”

The young man jovially called out to them that he would be along shortly. They continued on their way and he with his conversation, and then minutes later, after a sweet good-bye, the young lady turned and reentered the shop, and he jumped on his steed and chased after his waiting companions.

Making Fudge

I knew at some point I was going to buy some fudge, but first we walked into each fudge store that crossed our path and enjoyed the samples they liked to offer to prospective buyers. Delicious is all I can say! At one place we stood and watched a fudgemaker in action, and when I saw him sprinkle some ‘sugar’ on the ends of the slices of fudge, I asked him why. He told me it was salt, and he was making caramel and sea salt fudge. Yum! I had had salted toffee from Purdy’s but not fudge. He immediately took his knife and after carefully wiping it, drew down into the long snake of fudge cutting a 1/2” slice off, and then handed it to me for us to sample! This would be the store we would spend all our fudge money (and more) in, bringing home five half pound slices of maple walnut, vanilla macadamia, mint chocolate, caramel chocolate, and two more that I can’t remember. 

Walking through town, some of the more curious cyclists were: men in business suits, fudge-makers boys making deliveries, cleaning crews, painters returning home at the end of their work days, manure pick-up men, and boys and girls on tandem bikes. At the end of our day we arrived back at the Star Line ferry dock. We would enjoy a relaxing ride back to Mackinaw City to where we had parked our caravan. There were tens and tens of bicycles parked at the deck. The work day was over, and the workers that did not live on the island had ridden to the docks and left their bikes parked for the next day, when they would arrive back to pick it up and ride to their place of employment again. 

I spoke to a few people about the idea of living on the island full time, and it was interesting to listen to different views. In one office there were three ladies. One was a summer worker and lived on island, one was married to our tour bus driver and she lived off island but came on island daily, and the third was a lady that was born and raised on Mackinaw, and now her children were all grown up and they also lived and worked full-time on the resort island. One delightful story was that the girl at the ticket booth was married to the tour coordinator. He told us that he had driven past her for five years and been interested in her, but had not approached her. One day, after being off island for some time, she had arrived back, and he was told by his friends that he was the first person she asked after. He immediately invited her to play golf, and the rest is history.

The cashier in a shop told me about the down side of it. On hot summer days when the sun is beating down the stench of horse urine drying on the town streets can get pretty rank. There are workers that come through cleaning up the manure, but the liquid is harder to contend with. There are discreet employees with hoses washing down the streets, and the children learn pretty quickly not to play in the puddles...

A Yummy Lunch

Ayana Found a Model of the Bike We Have at  Home

We caught the boat back, and Courage went up on top to take some pictures under the bridge and of the rooster tail flow that came behind the Star Line Ferries boat. I think that island is worthy of a separate visit. There were many places to eat dinners and the prices were very reasonable; the hotels are abundant and the range is from economical to extravagant. The beach is there, the idea of renting a bicycle and riding through the streets and just parking the bicycle at the curb as you shop or dine somewhere is wonderful.