Donald Hiscock | Articles | Conde Nast Traveller
Michigan Drive
Michigan is urban, flat, carved up by interstates
and devoid of remarkable features. That much I knew, from visits to see a
friend in Detroit; but no more. My friend Jim, of course, knows the state
like the back of his hand. Which is where the whole thing started.
“Michigan is shaped like a mitten, which is very convenient when you’re
a kid,” Jim said, holding up his hand. “We’re here.”
He pointed to where his thumb began to run into his wrist. “And up here,”
he indicated his little finger, “is Traverse City.”
I had suggested that we might explore Michigan a little. He proposed driving
300 miles north to the state’s premier resort destination, somewhere
near his little finger. We would do the trip in his father’s Corvette,
a 1977 model of the iconic US sports car whose history began 40 years ago
just outside Detroit at Chevrolet Plant Number 35.
The journey up the I-75 highway was discouraging.
Under a lowering sky, on a late autumn day with the promise of snow, northern
Michigan seemed hardly more interesting than a mitten. At least until we turned
off at Gaylord and headed west into deep woodland, hunting country where small
lakes ringed by tall pines caught sudden glints of late-afternoon sun.
“Why all the carrots?” I asked as
we drove away from a service station in Kalkaska. They were piled high on
its forecourt, and outside a liquor store nearby. “They’re for
the deer,” Jim replied. How nice, I thought: people feed the deer through
the harsh winters. “They are used for bait. It attracts the deer so
that you can get yourself a kill.”
It was hunting that made Michigan, its deer
and elk population supporting the three native tribes (Ottawa, Ojibwa and
Potawatomi) which populated the area before the Europeans arrived, with fur
traders in the vanguard. But the state’s name is derived from its surroundings,
namely water: Michi Gami, the native name, means ‘large lake’.
Set on Lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie and Superior, the state has 3,288 miles
of shoreline; and the peninsulas and bays of its northwest are ideal for boating
and fishing.
Traverse City is the area’s main settlement,
set inside the Leelanau peninsula at the southern extreme of Grand Traverse
Bay. Although its origins lay in the fur trade (it was French trappers who
described the canoe crossing of the bay as a grande traversée) and
the lumber industry, Traverse City became a resort as long ago as the late
19th century, thanks to the oppressive summer heat of the urban Midwest. It’s
now an all-year-round resort destination: leaf peepers, mountain bikers and
those just spending a few days in a lake-shore cabin all make Traverse City
their base. On a Friday night the place was jumping, its brewpubs and restaurants
packed out with people from down state. Jim and I joined them and, over a
few beers, planned a route round the peninsula of Leelanau County for the
following day.
If I slept like a log that was only partly because
I had been dreaming of trees. The previous night’s beers also meant
that I couldn’t remember where Jim had said we were headed. It turned
out to be through trees, beautiful trees, and more beautiful trees. The sugar
maple, which turns vivid red and yellow in the fall, soon became my favourite.
From the moment we started our tour, aiming for Empire on Lake Michigan, sugar
maples lined the road, occasionally punctuated by a Dutch barn, a neat farm
or a wooden home draped with the stars and stripes.
We were heading north through villages hunkering down for winter, with Lake
Michigan on our left. These quiet places edge a seriously big lake: waves
crash in on the clean, white-sand beaches, making it easy to forget that this
is not an ocean shore. It must be good to swim here in the summer.
Our immediate destination was one of Jim’s favourite places, Sleeping
Bear Dunes National Shoreline. Parking the Corvette, we followed other hardy
visitors trekking to the top of an enormous dune. Half an hour later and four
hundred feet higher we stood on the summit, looking out towards the Manitou
Islands from whose ‘sleeping bear’ shape the dunes get their name.
Beyond them lay the Wisconsin shore, out of sight 50 miles away.
The view was huge, and it hardly changed right up to the lighthouse at the
tip of the Leelanau peninsula, which protects the entrance to Grand Traverse
Bay at Northport. Back down south, we drove along another peninsula, Old Mission,
which divides the bay north of Traverse City into its West Arm and its East
Arm.
Apart from tourism (and education), the Traverse area’s main economic
activity is fruit farming. It even has vineyards; but although they are on
the same latitude as Bordeaux, the similarities end there. The wine is drinkable,
but it doesn’t travel at all. So rather than wine tasting, we spent
a few Sunday morning hours walking up and down Traverse City’s Front
Street, browsing in the book store and watching other strollers admire the
Corvette, parked in a prime spot.
Before heading back south to Detroit, over brunch, Jim talked of his plan
to buy a place up north. “I can canoe in the summer, fish for trout
on those rivers Hemingway was always going on about, and watch the sun set
over the big lake. In the winter I can drill a hole in the ice, set up my
shanty, dangle a line down and sit back and drink beer while I wait for a
bite. And there’s the cross-country skiing, the guaranteed white Christmas,
the chance of seeing the northern lights and it’s only about three hours’
drive away.”
Things do change: the current Corvette is built not in the ‘Motor City’
but in bucolic-sounding Bowling Green, in Kentucky. Yet American Dreams survive,
even in Michigan, a state once known for being urban, flat, carved up by interstates
and devoid of remarkable features.
Conde Nast Traveller
Michigan Drive
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