Wayne State University Press. - Great Lakes Island escapes: ferries and bridges to adventure

Praise for Great Lakes Island Escapes

Part travelogue and part fact-filled guidebook, Maureen Dunphys Great Lakes Island Escapes: Ferries and Bridges to Adventure presents the reader with an insightful and engaging account of the history, natural wonders, recreational opportunities, and local flavor of more than two dozen Great Lakes Basin islands.

Phil Porter, Director of Mackinac State Historic Parks

As a kid growing up on Grosse Ile, I was considered an Islander. In Great Lakes Island Escapes, Maureen Dunphy skillfully weaves the information you need in order to visit with tales of why adventures in the middle of the Great Lakes are always superior to those on the mainland.

Jim DuFresne, author of Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails and Water Routes

In this informative and entertainingly written book, Maureen Dunphy portrays these very special places from all across the Great Lakes. In doing so, she is able to beautifully capture the essence of the phrase Island Time. This book will be a fine addition to the travel literature of our Inland Seas.

Arthur M. Woodford, author of This Is Detroit: 17012001 (Wayne State University Press, 2001) and Michigan Companion

Great Lakes Island Escapes is a combination of the authors personal experiences and loving reminiscences woven in with history, photographs, cultural attractions, local color, and her recommendations for each islands most compelling sites and captivating activities. Whether youre a Great Lakes island aficionado or a curious adventurer, Maureen Dunphys unique guidebook is an essential, intimate, traveling companion.

Michael Steinberg, founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction and author of Still Pitching, winner of the 2003 ForeWord Magazine Gold Medal for Memoir/Autobiography

In Great Lakes Island Escapes, Maureen Dunphy presents the islands as a network of understanding. Called minisan in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), these little bits of earth are the ears and eyes and bellybuttons of Gichigaming, the single system of five connected Great Lakes. These are the places where senses are heightened, where the connection between land, water, and life is more apparent. In each stopping place, Dunphy shares the necessary details for navigation and recounts the way spirits are lifted, moose are greeted, lives are remembered, and fires are kindled. She helps readers see the balance between silent ancient gardens and the hum of ferry motors, lighthouses and shipwrecks, the natural and the hand-hewn. Mostly she helps readers hear the call of the lakes and the little islands strung like stars around them. It would be hard to read this book without heading for one of the islands in real life or your next dream.

Margaret Noodin, assistant professor in English and American Indian studies at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee and author of Weweni: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English (Wayne State University Press, 2015)

2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-0-8143-4040-0 (paperback) / ISBN 978-0-8143-4041-7 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958997

Designed and typeset by Andrew Katz

Composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Painted Turtle is an imprint of Wayne State University Press

Wayne State University Press

Leonard N. Simons Building

4809 Woodward Avenue

Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309

Visit us online at wsupress.wayne.edu

In memory of my maternal grandparents,
Madaline and Howard Klotzbach,
who taught me the value of travel as adventure,
the joys of taking pictures,
and the pleasure of keeping a travel journal

Contents

Preface

The book you are holding in your hands was conceived during an impromptu happy hour on one of the best known of the Great Lakes Basin islands, Mackinac. After a day exploring the island on rented bikes, my husband and I were relaxing on the porch of the Harbour View Inn B&B, enjoying goat cheese on crackers with a good sauvignon blanc wed purchased up the street at Douds Market, the oldest family-owned grocery store in the United States. Having shown up for other reasons than for Michigans Republican Convention on the island, which was well under way, we were indulging in some serious people watching as visitors to the island streamed by on Main Street. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to imagine such a scene taking place on our island, Canadas Pelee Island, a rural island where wed owned a cottage for 15 years. How could two islands in the same freshwater system be so completely different?

We poured another glass of wine and reminisced about the other islands in the Great Lakes Basin wed visited over the years: Belle Isle, Bob-Lo Island, and Grosse Ile in the Detroit River; Beaver Island in Lake Michigan; Manitoulin Island and Flowerpot Island in Lake Huron; South Bass Island and Kelleys Island, in addition to Pelee Island, in Lake Erie. That night, looking out our third-floor window beyond the lights at the pier on Haldimand Bay to the Straits of Mackinac, I was remembering what very wonderfuland very differentadventures wed had on the 10 Great Lakes islands wed visited. Could there be more islands to explore, ones that wed missed? Surely there must be a book that would give me more Great Lakes island-hopping ideas. I looked when we got back to the mainland, but I could find no such book.

So instead I found myself ordering a 1953 National Geographic map of the Great Lakes region and spreading it out on my dining room table. I started fantasizing about freshwater island-hopping. But when I looked more closely I discovered, much to my astonishment, that the Great Lakes Basin actually has approximately 35,000 islands. Apparently, I was going to need some criteria to frame my adventure destinations. First, the island had to be in the Great Lakes Basinin a lake or in a river (or strait) connecting two of the lakes. Then, given that I wasnt keen on traveling either by small boat or plane, the island had to be accessible by ferry or bridge (or causeway). In my mind, I began stringing islands in the Great Lakes and their rivers together like rosary beads on a cord of water. Somewhere along the way, my fantasy became a plan, and ultimately, I discovered 136 (124 individually named) islands in the Great Lakes Basin that met my qualifications.

When I decided to revisit Grosse Ile, to see what I might find when I looked at a particular island destination as one of the many Great Lakes Basin islands, I asked my good friend Val, who had grown up on the island, if shed like to accompany me. We had such a good time on the Saturday wed chosen for our adventure that we went back again the next Saturday. It was on these two trips that I realized the value of having a traveling companion, another pair of eyes, another personality through which to filter the island experience, to say nothing of the enjoyment of sharing an adventure with a friend (and later sharing the memories.) I invited 23 women friends to be future traveling companions, and 19 brave souls accepted the challenge. A handful of family members agreed to accompany me on a trip as well.

Between May 25, 2013, and August 21, 2014, I made 27 trips, each with a friend or family member, to 136 Great Lakes Basin islands. Although I know from my own experience on Pelee Island that spring and fall can be the best times to visit a Great Lakes island (and Ive talked to residents on a number of islands who loveat least during the first bit of the seasonthe isolation that winter brings), most of my trips were taken between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend so as to experience what most island adventurers would find during summer day trips or vacations to the islands.