Travels with Pops: There's Mani-one and Manitou: a couple of nights on North Manitou Island, Michigan

The game plan was to spend four days/three nights backpacking North Manitou Island, ten miles off the coast of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dune in northwest Michigan. Made the ferry reservations, secured the dogs, bought some booze, and headed north. Except this:

Not to worry: As they say, there's no bad weather, just bad gear.At least that's what Britney Spears always says.

Leland Michigan's Fishtown. Pretty damn cool. Think: mini Cannery Row.

This is what you look like when you're not quite sure what you've gotten yourself into. North Manitou is designated as "Wilderness" by the NPS, which for many people sounds like "NO FUN": no vehicles, no pets, no fires, dig a cat hole and try to stay tidy. Strictly drink-what-you-brought/love-the-one-you're-with/every-man-for-himself territory. Except my lovely wife Karen is a stud, and she wasn't worried at all.

Carefully cradling her last cold Diet Coke, my lovely wife slowly started to warm up to the thought of no people, no stress. Hell, the trip was her idea so she had no choice. Rule #1 of wilderness adventure: he/she who hatches the plan, waives the right to bitch. As it turned out, there was absolutely nothing to bitch about. North Manitou turned out to be our idea of paradise. Except for the No-See-Ums. Little bastards.

The Wickee Mocka WowWow (or something like that) had some big balls and quickly got up to speed for the hour ride across one of the most dangerous passages for boats in the Northern Hemisphere. Thus began my love affair with Bell's Two Hearted Ale, which was served ice cold for a mere $6.00 a can.
I shouldn't jest: the ferry service to North and South Manitou has a rich legacy of safely transporting fools like us and they run a tight ship: when they say they're leaving at 12:40, they really mean it. We couldn't ask for a better start to our adventure, and I think the folks who run the ferry service are kickass.

Indeed upon arrival, they quickly kicked our asses off at the NPS dock. After the rangers tried to scare us with a brief talk about the monetary dangers of camping within 300 feet of the water and building fires (turns out they weren't bluffing), we were off....And within minutes our itinerary was thrown to the constantly shifting winds of Lake Michigan.

I mean, we didn't come here to walk the main trail through the woods. You can do that anywhere. We zigged as everyone else zagged north, and headed south down the beach for some sunshine and solitude.

We're not even amateur geologists but we know some cool rocks when we see them. These stretches of weathered white rocks rivaled anything we'd seen at Copper Harbor or Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

We stomped a little, then found a place to make camp. The fog rolled in and it seemed like we were in for another experience like we'd had at Pictured Rocks: yeah, yeah, if you look real close through the fog and use your imagination, you can imagine seeing what you came to see. But really we couldn't that day, and we had a sublime time anyway. This time was different: we were on an island and only the main trail was marked and evident. Finding the secondary trails, even with a map, was kind of a crap shoot, and forget about the "historic trails" - they had devolved/recovered into something less than deer paths. It was fun, tho, because we had our shit together and the lake was always our guide.

After checking out Bournique's homestead, one of the few historic homestead structures left standing by the NPS, and an incredibly beautiful cemetery that gave us pause, we were treated to a weird phenomenon: I can only describe it as a fog rainbow.

The view toward the east that night was damn cool.

Our site was probably slightly illegal, being only about 150 feet from the shore.

The lake was still calm the next morning. The only thing as beautiful as a Lake Michigan sunset is a Lake Michigan sunrise.

Day two started with a hike across to the west side of the island through a beautiful beech/maple forest, and an occasional maple sapling tunnel. We stopped at a site called Fat Annie's, which is now nothing more than a clearing, but was once one of the many homesteads on the southern end of the island. The history of these homesteads and the small logging town that was home to nearly 300 people is a fascinating glimpse into the recent past of the Great Lakes. By a twist of fate, a wealthy industrialist from Chicago began buying up as many of the homesteads as he could in a attempt to create his own personal hunting grounds. When he died, his heirs didn't want to maintain the place. As a result, he entire island, except for one cottage near the ranger station, was given to the NPS. If you've ever driven up the coast of Lake Michigan, or any Great Lake, or the Atlantic or Pacific coast for that matter and wondered what it must have been like before people and their condos and beach houses, well, that's what North Manitou is becoming once again.

South Manitou in the distance. We scouted the shoreline for a good place to camp and weather the storm that was predicted to arrive that night.

I took a dip in water to cool off and it was balls-freezing, ice cream headache cold. But refreshing nevertheless. Sleeping Bear Sand Dune can be seen to the left. The native history of Sleeping Bear and the two Manitous is as interesting and meaningful as the "true" history of white people's attempts at settling the area. You can look up the story for yourself - it's sad and beautiful - but we contented ourselves with knowing that the bear cubs are being cared for again and momma bear can rest peacefully.

Found a great campsite that was probably more illegal than our first one, but it was off a spur trail, hidden and protected. Took a hike down to the southern tip of the island toward the Piping Plover sanctuary. The gulls, as common as they are on the mainland, became an object of fascination to me. Somehow, they seemed wild and unsullied and just as interesting as the endangered Plover or the Bald Eagle family we would see later.

We climbed a dune that seemed kinda "crytobiotic" in its color and vegetation. We sat beneath a cedar tree as the storm approached, then began making our way back to camp.

Turns out that the forecast was wrong, as usual: the wind blew a bit and we got about an hour of rain. The lake churned up and we were treated to the roar of the waves as we settled in for the night. The next morning, the lake was choppy and glorious. We later found out that some of the other hikers had opted to spend the night in the campground on the northeast side of the island, fearing the worst. I guess we got a little lucky, but we've camped near Lake Michigan quite a few times and we were prepared if things got crazy.

We saw a group of hikers camped the day before and a single adventurous soul walking the beach in the distance for a grand total of four people in two days. It was awesome. We had the entire shoreline to ourselves and the rhythm of the place was setting in magically, punctuated by the sound of the shoal horn from the passage.

South Manitou is about three miles away and the mainland is about ten.

We climbed what we thought was Old Baldy sand dune (it wasn't - just a much shorter little brother). When we got to the top, we witnessed dune geology first hand: all of the wind from that section of the shore was funneled up to an opening about ten feet across, and the effect was a jet of sand-laden air which was painful to face into.

My guess is that it's about 300 down to the shore, and we had fun running down like a couple of teenagers.

Our campsite was so cool, that we decided to spend the third night there as well.

This was our own private wilderness paradise. Karen fell in love with it, high praise from someone who has spent her life around Lakes Michigan and Huron.

We filtered all of our water from the lake. I can't say enough about the Sawyer system: it was safe, fast, efficient and lightweight.

Frederick's Homestead is a beautiful open field facing the west. Somebody had constructed a bench out of driftwood and left a marker for people to sign in.

One of the best stomps ever: we figured we could make it up the shoreline to the site of Crescent City despite the lack of a trail and the daunting angles at which the bluffs reach down to the water. With a water filter, plenty of food, the lake as our guide, and the whole day to explore, we headed north and were rewarded with one of the best hikes of my life. The raw wildness of the lake and its colors blew me away and the lack of any sign of humanity made us feel damned blessed.

The ever-changing beauty of the lake...

...is almost as beautiful as my wife.

A typical kickass Lake Michigan sunset.

We decided to wait until the morning of our departure to hike back up to the ranger station and dock. Making faster progress than we had expected gave us an opportunity to stop and enjoy some coffee on the beach and watch a merganser with her adopted brood of at least 40 ducklings.

Departure came too quickly, but it gave us a chance to talk with some of the other people who had been on the island. We met a group of older men who told us about their love for Isle Royale, and how they were confronted by the Manitou park rangers for camping too close to the water. The very same rangers walked up to the visitor hut and began making preparations to account for everyone. We asked them about the fines for the various infractions and they revealed that they couldn't actually fine anyone. We guessed that they were interns so we all got a good chuckle. Everyone was swapping stories on the ferry ride back, and we began talking with a group of younger people who had met in college and were in the middle of one of their many wilderness vacations. Very cool people.