It’s our last week in Michigan, and as glorious as this month of summering has been, I’m looking forward to the “flow” tide after this much needed “ebb” has restored us. I’ve done very little work the past few weeks, trading my usual creative hustle for long, slow days with the kids where we walk to the lake, intending to return after ten minutes, and three hours later finally make it back. I never knew blessed nothingness could feel so full and take up so much time.

But I miss the creative hustle and am ready to pour time into ideas and work I’ve shelved this month. And we miss Brett, and our home, and our beds, and our friends, and silly little parts of our normal routine that will suddenly feel new and extraordinary when we return home–like making coffee in my own kitchen with my favorite mug, or walking to the neighbors to borrow half & half and remembering how much I love our little life at home.

I’ve been sharing photos of summers in Michigan for years now and don’t want to be redundant with travel posts. If you’ve followed here for long, you know the drill–we go to the same places every year, and I gush about my love for these lakes and these woods and the way watching the sunset from the sand dunes is a storybook experience that will feed your soul. I conclude in fifth grade persuasive essay style with a convincing plea to put Northern Michigan on your bucket list, and I support it with good reasons plus 500 photos of beautiful Michigan things.

This Mackinac Island post is a heartfelt ditto to posts of previous years.

Dash went into his annual Mackinac Island Horse Trance.

…and I prepped him with his own tiny horse name journal this year so he could put his kindergarten writing skills to good use. He yells to the carriage drivers, “What’s the horses’ names?!” as they pass and records their answers in his book so that by the time we leave the island, he has pages full of horse duos–Sporty & Oliver, Kelly & Pearl, Amber & Jude.

Our friends who moved from Naples to Chicago last year came with us to the island this year, and it was so much fun introducing them to all our favorite things to explore.

We’ve been waiting years to ride bikes on the island, an experience we’ll never miss now. You can bike the entire perimeter of the island (8.2 miles), and there are no cars competing for road space.

We biked to Arch Rock, a gorgeous natural limestone formation that sits high (240 stairs!) above Lake Huron.

I always receive a flood of direct messages with island questions when we’re there, so here’s a little 411 wrap-up.

Is it super expensive?
There are several different ways to explore the island on different budgets. You can take a morning ferry, explore all day and return home without staying on the island; but staying overnight is half the fun as once the last ferry leaves, there’s a certain magic about being stuck (and we could never cram in everything we want to do in one day!). You could definitely spend a week on the island with family and have enough to explore, but we usually arrive in the morning, stay overnight and take a late ferry the second day for two full days on the island. We always say we wish we would have booked two nights when we leave though because we’re never ready to say goodbye. Star Line Ferry usually offers a half-off ferry ticket sale 1-2 times throughout the year (If I recall correctly, we’ve purchased half price tickets on Black Friday and Valentine’s Day) which saves us a lot of money for the entire family. A regular priced ferry ticket is $25 round trip for adults and $15 for kids. I follow Mackinac Island accounts on social media so I don’t miss any sales (and Michigan Instagram readers who know I love the island are always so good about messaging me when there’s a Mackinac deal–thank you!) We try and book our hotel March/April for a good deal. The Grand Hotel is the most famous hotel on the island, but it’s very expensive. We’ve stayed at the Island House, Harbor View Inn and Mission Point for anywhere between $200-$250 a night. I’d definitely suggest staying off Main Street (away from the main tourist area).

We did the ghost tour this year, and I don’t know if it was our tour leader or the tour itself, but I wouldn’t recommend it. We all got really bored and thought Poppa could tell way better ghost stories.

This was Nella after the tour (we scooted out early): OVER IT.

Where should we eat?
If you eat at only one restaurant on the island, make it Woods, the island’s best secret. It’s literally hidden up in the woods in the interior of the island, next to Stonecliff mansion and away from the main tourist attractions. It was built in 1915 by one of the mansion owners as a playhouse for their children and is now a restaurant with the most enchanting ambience–fireplaces, candles, tables tucked into cozy nooks, a hunting lodge style cocktail bar and a hidden duckpin bowling alley in the back.

Woods is about a 30-minute carriage taxi ride from the main island road ($7.50/adult one way–half price for kids).

Other new experiences on the island this year…

The new Watercolor Cafe hidden behind the Bayview Bed & Breakfast. It feels like a secret–quiet, tucked against the harbor, delicious food (get the peanut butter and banana toast!), the most beautiful view on the island, and so many things for kids to explore–art supplies, kids books, tables set up for creating things. We stayed for two hours and could have easily stayed longer.

Several island lovers messaged me this year and told me about the Grand Hotel’s secret garden in the woods, so we added that to our list this year as well and, per usual, were not disappointed. We explored the trails in the woods next to the Grand Hotel and not only found the secret garden but a flower-filled greenhouse as well.

Everything feels like a children’s storybook on the island…

 

…and we’re always sad to step on the fairy the night we leave and watch our enchanting summer place slowly disappear as we go home.

Until next year…

 

There are two environments I’ve experienced in life that have made me feel completely renewed and at home. One is the mountains, even though I have never lived there. The other is alongside a lake in the Midwest during the summer. I tried to describe it more clearly to Brett the other day as the sky shifted into its enchanting evening mode and the first lightning bugs came out for their matinee performance.

“You know how people describe seeing the Amalfi coast? Or waking up in Tuscany?” I ask him. “That’s how I feel here. There’s a summer magic here that literally takes my breath away–it’s a happy calm I can’t quite describe.”

“I think you’re forgetting what it’s like here in February,” Brett retorts. “It’ll take your breath away alright.” He laughs hard at his dad joke, as he often does.

“LET ME HAVE MY MAGIC, OKAY?” I yell back.

Maybe that’s part of the magic–the fact that a Midwest summer is so fleeting and that people here have to endure a hellish climate for way too long while waiting for their seasonal flower to bloom, so that when it comes, you notice and drink in every glorious thing about it. I wouldn’t doubt there’s also some nostalgia tangled up in my love affair, the spell of childhood delights reawakened when I’m back on soft grass with a pebbled lake shore nearby.

Whatever the case, I wait for this all year–and to see my family enjoying all my summer loves makes me ridiculously happy.

“I see you quite enjoying evening fishing with a lake breeze,” I point out to Brett. “You think I don’t notice you all blissed out next to that campfire? Don’t pretend like you’re not in love with it too. Admit it, you like it here.”

“…in the summer,” he’s careful to add.

This week, we’re actually back to Brett’s old summer stomping grounds–Delavan Lake, Wisconsin–while we’ve been waiting for Lainey to finish her first sleep away camp. We dropped her off last week–a goodbye that was hard for many reasons. Camp was a big decision for her, but one we know will give her priceless life lessons and summer memories. Longest time we’ve ever been apart from each other, and…with no contact. (spoiler alert: we picked her up this morning, and all is well! The camp songs! The chants! The stories of secret camp rituals, cabin pranks and counselor skits! All the summer magic!)

I’ve never spent a summer in Wisconsin before and am delighted by how much it feels like Michigan. We spent most of our first week at a friend’s empty lake house and are finishing up Brett’s part of our vacation at a lake resort on Lake Delavan.

Some favorites so far…

The swing. We visited a friend’s house in Rockford before heading to the lake, and the girls fell in love with the swing outside her house. The next morning, we found it on a grocery run to Walmart (only $35!) and brought it back to hang from the most perfect swing branch in the history of mankind–a sturdy arm of an old enchanted willow tree extending over the water. The leaves draped all around the swing, creating a little foliage grotto straight out of a storybook.

Dash fell asleep in it one afternoon, and slept for two hours.

Lainey and Dash read books in it another afternoon. And early one evening, I went out with Nella, intending to swing for a few minutes but woke up later to a dark night sky and Nella sound asleep next to me.

Dash has spent hours fishing–my new favorite hobby for him. He sat in a chair–quietly, alone–for HOURS, patiently waiting for a fish. He caught many…

…and shared the love.

He also found a new best friend–a stick he named Max. We are inspired by Max’s perpetual state of summer excitement, his arms raised in an exuberant “WOOHOO!” forever. We will be taking him home with us because we will need his mojo come the first week of school.

Painting rocks has become a summer tradition now. We paint them by the lake with music and snacks and take the finished products to the nearest town, hiding them in store windows and planters for others to find and take home. The first time we did this, we were staying in Blairsville, Georgia where we evacuated for Hurricane Irma and learned that the painted rock treasure hunt was an actual ongoing activity in the town (store owners even hide them in their shops!). We were hooked.

Making things on summer vacation is definitely one of my favorite things to be happy about. “You know you’d have more room in your suitcase if you didn’t bring half the inventory of Michael’s, right?” Brett says. Almost everything we make on summer vacation, we make in open air. We paint in the grass, craft bracelets on picnic tables, journal in the hammock. I even bring all our cherry pie ingredients outside, and we put them together on the back deck at my dad’s. It’s so creatively invigorating to make things in nature and to change up normal create routines.

And as always, I stash all the love, all the feelings, all the inspiration that comes from the magic of a Midwest summer and store it in the reserves to take home come August. The last few years, going home at the end of the summer isn’t depressing. I’m always ready to put to use back home what I’ve gathered from all this good.

Meanwhile, we’re still in stash mode. On to Michigan this week!