Hello Everyone! It’s hard to believe another week has passed here in the Great Lakes State. They really seem to be flying by and while I am seeing and doing a lot, the time is really moving. I’ve finally crossed the 45th Parallel (midway between the equator and the North Pole) for the final time here in Michigan and am only heading north from here. I spent a little more time than I would have liked to have in Traverse City this week, but it was a nice town and I was able to catch up on some work. I finished another episode of my podcast (out now – listen to it here or by searching “American Anthology” wherever you get your podcasts), which is always a bit of a chore even if it’s something I really enjoy doing. I also spent a night out on far-flung Beaver Island, Lake Michigan’s largest island and an interesting place to visit. The weather has been holding up pretty well, but we’ve had some hazy days here which hasn’t made for the best photography conditions. All in all, it’s been a pretty good week on the road.
When last I wrote, I had just arrived in Traverse City. Traverse City is a very pleasant town with a good variety of services which allowed me to get some work done. In addition to the library which had good internet access, they also had a gym to shower at and plenty of shops to restock my supplies. On Thursday night, after I finished up last week’s This Week, I headed out to the Traverse City Pit-Spitters baseball game. The Pit-Spitters are a part of the Northwoods League which is a summer league for college players. The game was a lot of fun and it was $2 beer and hotdog night which you really can’t go wrong with. I also have to applaud whatever genius came up with the name “Pit-Spitters” because I absolutely had to buy a t-shirt at the game. And the Pit-Spitters won, so that made it even better.
On Friday morning I toured the old Michigan State Asylum in Traverse City. At $30 for a ticket, it was a bit pricey for a walking tour, but it was really good and I would say definitely worth it. Our guide grew up in the area and had several connections to the hospital when it was still active (which it was until the 1980s). He intertwined his personal stories in with the history of the building and what they accomplished there. The central idea by which they operated was “beauty is therapy”, which meant that the campus was full of ponds and flowers and walking trails and the buildings had big windows to let in plenty of sun and it was well appointed with nice furniture and plenty of art. Patients were expected to work, and the hospital was self-sustaining for much of its early existence, producing enough food that there was a surplus which was sold to the local community. When the hospital officially closed, the community banded together to save it from being demolished. Today the campus is getting a second life as a mixed-use complex with condos, restaurants, studios and low-income housing. The whole place was really cool and definitely worth seeing. After my tour, I enjoyed a nice lunch in one of the restaurants there. When I finished at the hospital, I embarked on an afternoon drive up the Old Mission Peninsula which took me to the old Mission Point Lighthouse and past some wonderful farm stands and wineries. They’re coming to the very end of the cherry season here in Michigan, and it’s been great to eat so many cherries and taste different varieties. I’m probably about cherried out though. Heading back in Traverse City, I went to a nice winery just outside of town for some live music and a few glasses of wine and to finish writing the last bits of my podcast.
Saturday I spent the day working on my podcast and then spent the evening in town. I found it very strange that every bar I went to was serving flat beer – not just the breweries, but the bars too. I don’t know what was going on there but I finally gave up and went to bottles and cans. I also made another mistake by ordering Vietnamese food (one of my favorites) in a restaurant clearly not run by Vietnamese people. It wasn’t as bad as my poke experience in Flint, but it was pretty bad. It wasn’t Pho, but just a beef soup with vermicelli in it. Sometimes I get so excited about something that I forget where I am. When I was thinking more clearly, I did enjoy a delicious pasty while I was in Traverse City, which is much more appropriate to the region. Pasties originated in Cornwall in the U.K. as a convenient way to bring a whole meal into the mines (much like West Virginia’s pepperoni rolls), and caught on in the copper and iron mines of the Upper Peninsula. I am looking forward to more pasties as I head north as I remember them fondly from my childhood visits, and this was a great way to get started.
I finally made my way out of Traverse City on Sunday morning and headed north along the coast to Charlevoix. Their nickname “Charlevoix the Beautiful” is apt as it is a wonderful little town with a lot of character to it. It’s small, but the main drag is full of quaint shops and restaurants and they have an enormous harbor which leads into Lake Charlevoix, one of Michigan’s largest interior lakes. Charlevoix has a really special architectural district in town created by the architect Earl Young. He used local materials and unusual lines to create fairytale type houses in two different areas of the city. Some of these houses are reminiscent of mushrooms while some feel more like Hobbits might stroll out the front door at any minute. They made me smile and I enjoyed wandering around and looking at them.
While in Charlevoix I also made the decision to head out to Beaver Island on Monday and spend the night out there, so that morning I was up early and on the ferry for an 8:30 departure. Beaver Island is about 2 hours from Charlevoix, and the ferry is a good size for the journey, making easy work of the crossing. When I arrived, I found the main street in St. James reminiscent of small towns I’ve spent time in in Alaska. I walked up to the campground which is about a mile from the ferry dock, where I scored another excellent lake-view site and got set up and moved in before coming back to St. James. When I got back to town, I visited the two museums – one an excellent maritime museum and the other more about the people and nature of the island and located in the old Mormon print shop. Beaver Island was once home of a Mormon kingdom under the leadership of James Strang who believed himself to be the successor of John Smith after his death in opposition to Brigham Young’s claim. Strang moved with his followers to Beaver Island because the fishing was excellent there and could provide food for a large community. It seems that very quickly he got a big head, declared himself king and banished most non-Mormons from the island. Strang arrived on Beaver Island in 1848 and in 1856, was assassinated by two men who had become disaffected with Strang and his brand of Mormonism. With Strang dead, his “kingdom” quickly fell apart as those he had banished from the island returned with a vengeance. Also arriving around the same time were groups of Irish settlers who had fled Arranmore, an island off the coast of Donegal. These Irish immigrants quickly moved into the recently abandoned Mormon communities on the island and it is their descendants who live on the island today. All of these early settlers depended heavily on fishing, and when the area became overfished and sea lampreys wreaked havoc on the Great Lakes, the island’s population dipped from well over a thousand down to just 200. Tourism has brought the population back up to around 650 year-round residents and more in the busy summer season. I met some wonderful people there, heard a unique accent in their voices and found a lot of fun little quirks which all islands I’ve ever been to have.
In addition to the two museums, there was a great historic walking tour of St. James which led all the way out to the lighthouse on Whiskey Point (I’ll let you decide if it was the Mormons or the Irish who gave it that name). From there, the tour returned to town and took me through the cemetery and past the two main churches. By the time I was done with the walking tour, I had put on quite a few miles and decided I had earned the pizza buffet at the Shamrock Pub which was really quite good. With my belly full of delicious pizza, I headed down the street to the old Mormon Print Shop museum for a wonderful event called Music on the Porch. This concert was a part of the island’s Museum Week and was the final selling point on my trip to the island. People from all over the island came out to perform a few songs on the porch and a hundred or so people came out to enjoy it with me. Some of the performers were quite good while some were quite courageous to come out and perform in front of people while not being great. I actually really admire those people for their effort as I don’t know if I could do it myself. All-in-all it was a wonderful night and what this trip is all about – local music on a Monday night on a far-flung island in a relatively unvisited part of the country. I loved it and hummed the whole way back to camp.
Music on the Porch
Tuesday morning I broke camp and wandered back to the dock area. I had a nice breakfast at the bakery and then hopped on the boat for the return journey to Charlevoix. When I got back, I decided to use their library for a while to get some photos edited and published, then went for a swim on the beach and then headed on to Petoskey.
Petoskey is another historic Lake Michigan town with a great historic district and some wonderful views out over the water. There are hills here, which I haven’t seen many of since coming to Michigan, and being up a little bit from the water makes for some nice breezes. I had a nice walk around town last night which was great – especially seeing the Perry Hotel, the only remaining hotel from Petoskey’s glory days as a Victorian vacation town on the railroad line (all of the other hotels burned to the ground over the years). I spent last night out at the casino just outside of town which was very quiet and pleasant.
Today I’m going to finish up this post and then head on around the coast through Michigan’s “Tunnel of Trees”, a scenic drive through some beautiful forest land which I’m really looking forward to. Then I’m going to head out to Cheboygan for the night and get ready to go to Mackinac Island first thing in the morning. On Friday, I’ll cross the Mackinac bridge and be off and running in the Northern Peninsula of the state. There are some great state parks I want to see up there, and of course Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Isle Royale National Park are at the top of my list. I hope to be in the U.P. for about 2 weeks before I head south and into Wisconsin. I haven’t really looked past the island and bridge yet, but I’m sure the week ahead will be a good one and I’m really looking forward to it. I hope you’ll come back next week so I can tell you all about it. Have a great week out there and I hope to see you right back here, same time next week. Thanks for reading.
-Mike