Visiting Mackinac Island is like stepping back in time, but with waaay too many fudge shoppes (l lost count after 12 or so). Most of Mackinac Island is a Michigan State Park with strict rules on motorized vehicles and the style in which and where and when houses may be built and renovated - giving the impression of a perfect late 19th century resort village. The land underlying all private houses belongs to Michigan State and all seems to be managed to good effect, particularly in this age of distrust of government. There is electricity, plumbing and running water - so it's not a complete turning back of the clock and of access to technology. But the effect of their efforts is an oasis of manicured beauty and opulence in the middle of the savage wildness of the great lakes; and you should all come and see it some day.

[photos of town and Marquette Park]

Asphalt is also permitted on Mackinac Island and the island has the only state highway where there are no motor vehicles, only bikes and horse powered carts and carriages. The highway around the perimeter of the island is 8.2 miles (they even have an 8.2 Mile Road Race) and we toured with our bikes around it and visited the Arch Rock, British Landing, the Devil's Kitchen and other sites. The island is mostly brecciated limestone with a modest covering of topsoil - as the stone in various places has eroded it has left stones in interesting shapes, such as the Arch and the Kitchen.

[photos of Arch/Kitchen]

After a brief rest in Marquette Park, we ventured into the interior via wooded roads to see the Sugar Loaf - another example of limestone erosion, best seen from Point Lookout. We also walked around the reconstructed Fort Holmes at roughly the highest point of land on the island.

[photos of Sugar Loaf / Fort Holmes]

The island has a complicated history, first explored and settled by the French, who had a vested interest in protecting the lucrative fur trade. Mackinaw Island formed an early central hub for the fur trade due to its central and militarily strategic location in the Straights of Mackinaw where all maritime traffic in goods could be easily controlled. Of course, the Jesuits followed - with their carefully curated relationships with indigenous Huron natives. Father Jacques Marquette came in the late 1600's and founded missions and a church that has direct continuity with institutions still on the island. Marquette and Louis Jolliet made their mark by being the first non-natives to explore, map out and provide intelligence the French of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River - all serving the exploitation and development of the area. The island was also a prize of dispute between the young United States and the British in Canada - and even though fortified by the US, was captured by the British in the War of 1812 and remained a heavily fortified area through out the 19th century.

The island was a such a hub of the fur trade that the scion of the Astor family, William Backhouse Astor, was sent by his family to control the beaver pelt trade - so lucrative that it brought in over $3 million dollars in 1820 from Mackinac alone. After the decline of the fur trade, the tourism industry fed by wealthy Chicagoans built the island into the pleasure dome of the US midwest - a cross between Nantucket and Newport RI, the delightful remnants of which are so well preserved here.

In the early morning hours of September 8, we were awoken by the rhythmic and periodic violent slamming of the boat into the docks. The winds had picked up from the east - pushing 2-3 foot swells into the harbor from its most vulnerable angle. We got out and tried as best we could in the dark to secure more fenders on the boat and to tighten up the lines to moderately improved effect. The swells continued all through the next day, incentivizing us to get out and go do some sightseeing.

We paid a visit to Fort Mackinac with its cannon and rifle demonstrations, but also some interesting commentary on the history and development of the island. In an earlier incarnation, the Fort had been pummeled in 1812 by the British, who then built the earlier version of Fort Holmes (called Fort George by them) on higher ground. The current version of the Fort is how it looked up until the late 19th century when the federal lands here were turned over to the State of Michigan.

[photos of Fort]

Of course, on Mackinac Island, you have to take a horse carriage tour and the driver took us to all the places we missed on the bicycle - including the neighborhoods where the actual residents of the island live.

[photos of horse carriage ride]

Life seems to go on at a much slower pace here - and must seem very small and isolated in the off-season. After a late dinner at Mission Point, we returned to Salty, and the water and winds had calmed considerably such that it was easy to go to sleep that night without all of the slamming and violent rocking and jerking.