Northern Michigan Is Not On Fire

We arrived in Elk Rapids, Michigan on Sunday, August 27th, after a long and rainy day in the truck. Okay, it didn’t rain all day, but close enough. Taco Negro arrived in Elk Rapids looking halfway clean.

My parents confirmed that the weather in northern Michigan (and the UP) would continue to be rainy for at least the next week. So we took the opportunity to check out the Elk Rapids area.

Where my parents live is actually a couple miles north of Elk Rapids. Their house is not on Lake Michigan but it’s pretty close – a five minute walk brings you to a one of the neighborhood’s private beaches.

A 10-15 minute walk in the opposite direction brings you to an even bigger neighborhood beach, although this one is open to the public.

All the beaches in the area are sand beaches. That might sound like a strange observation, but in Colorado most of the “beaches” there are made up of rocks. This has been a lovely change. The water was not as cold as I expected. I haven’t been swimming yet, but barefoot walks on the beach quickly became routine.

Bailey has been loving his new access to water. We now take him to the close-by beach every day. Sometimes twice a day, if the first session didn’t wear him out enough.

So while it has been raining here daily, as you can see from the photos, it hasn’t been raining all day every day. Pockets of sunshine made for great outings.

We drove up to nearby Charlevoix to see their little downtown, as well as pick up dinner (walleye) from John Cross Fishery. There is no website, but my mom said this guy is locally famous so I guess he doesn’t need one.

Charlevoix has a unique location – right in between Lake Michigan and Lake Charlevoix. There is a really pretty harbor right next to the main drag and boats can get from one lake to another by passing underneath this bridge.

Looks a bit low for sailboats, right? As you might have guessed this one’s a drawbridge.

I didn’t hang out long enough to figure out if the drawbridge operated on a schedule or not. My dad thought it was every half hour.

Before the bridge went up, we did see boats lined up on the Lake Michigan side. A pretty spot to wait, if you ask me.

It took a couple more days for the weather to clear out. But September 1st looked like a sunny day with temperatures in the 60s, so we made the 2-hour drive up to Mackinaw City and took Bailey with us onto the Star Line ferry over to Mackinac Island.

Don’t ask me why the city and the island are spelled differently, I don’t know. I do know that it’s pronounced like the city.

Mackinac Island sits in between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan, in between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron (although it’s technically in Lake Huron), an area called the Straits of Mackinac. About 500 people live year-round on this island of less than 4 square miles.

The name can be traced back to Michilimackinac, which was how the French traders pronounced the Ojibwe name for this island. (It means “big turtle.”)

It’s long been a vacation spot, but Mackinac Island’s big claim to fame is that cars are banned here. People get around by foot, bicycle, or horse.

That’s right, there are a lot of horses on Mackinac Island. That’s how the heavy lifting gets done.

The garbage “trucks” are big carts pulled by draft horses. Horse-drawn flatbed carts deliver supplies and luggage from the ferries. Horse-drawn carriages take people to hotels – some are taxis, but the bigger hotels have their own.

We had Bailey with us so we didn’t rent bikes. We were tempted though, when we saw that we could rent a Burley trailer for just $8/hour. But we weren’t sure if Bailey would like riding in a trailer, and at any rate we enjoyed walking. We went first over to a spot called the Ice House for lunch – they had outdoor seating and dogs were welcome. Bailey got lots of compliments on being so well-behaved.

After lunch we walked over to the gigantic green lawn in front of the Mission Point Resort. And it was a lawn – I didn’t see a single weed. There were lots of chairs, though.

I saw lots of goose poop but no geese. Apparently they use a dog to chase the pesky birds off every morning.

 

 

In case you’re wondering what the view from those chairs…

Yeah, we sat there for quite a while.

 

 

 

 

And don’t worry, Bailey and I got some snuggle time too.

 

 

 

After our day on Mackinac Island the weather deteriorated, with spotty rain showers every day. But we dodged the showers to visit several local farmer’s markets – I’ve been eating the crap out of sweet corn, tomatoes, and a delicious local variety of apple called a SweeTango. My parents also took us down to Traverse City, about a 30 minute drive south from their house, to check out something called the The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

Let me back up a step. Because first of all, I think Outside Magazine missed the mark when they chose Grand Rapids for one of their top 25 towns of 2017. Traverse City is an amazingly cool place. Lake Michigan is right on the town’s doorstep, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, all the beaches here are sand. Traverse City’s downtown area is full of coffee shops, bookstores, boutiques, and restaurants.

And then there’s the Village at Grand Traverse Commons. The name is a mouthful, I know, but the history of this place is remarkable. It began in 1885 (after a three year construction period) as the North Michigan Asylum. At its peak, this huge, self-sufficient mental hospital was called the Traverse City State Hospital and housed 3,800 patients and 800 staff. (You can read more about their history here.)

The idea behind the grounds here was to give the patients something pretty to look at, referred to as the “beauty is therapy” theory, instead of being locked in little windowless rooms all day. Who’d a thunk it?

The hospital closed in 1989 and the property sat vacant until about 2000. Renovation on the property began in 2002, although some of the buildings deemed “non-historic” were demolished. The largest building (over 300,000 square feet), known as Building 50, has seen the most restoration and is now home to shopping, dining, and living spaces. There’s even an apartment complex for the 55-and-over crowd.

This is one corner of Building 50. Believe it or not, the spires on top of this building were part of what was, in the late 1800’s, a state-of-the-art ventilation system. Large fans would force air through underground tunnels and up flues in various parts of the building, exiting at these spires.

We wandered around Building 50 for over an hour, poking through antique shops, jewelry stores, and a bookstore. We had lunch at The Underground Cheesecake Company, which was okay. It’s hard to say nice things about a place when the girl working the counter replied to my question about what was in the chicken pot pie soup with “I don’t know,” followed by silence.  I tried again, asking if there were dumplings or anything in it. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I didn’t make it.”

Really? That’s it? Christ, I did customer service work for years and I’m telling you, it’s not that hard.

Anyway. After lunch we wandered around some more, stopping for coffee at Cuppa Joe Coffee. They knew their stuff and the coffee was excellent.

The grounds of the old asylum are open too, and there are more dining and shopping options outside.

You can see from the above photo that in spite of the long name, The Village at Grand Traverse Commons is pretty popular. And since more buildings are being renovated, I expect that popularity to continue.

The weather is supposed to clear up, though, and this weekend we’re going back…. to the UP.