Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
didandobnoxiouslyhoity-toitysuchinstitution Ihaveevercomeacross.Aramblingwhite
wooden building with the biggest porch in the world (660 feet), it is indubitably swish
and expensive. A single room at the time I was there cost $135 a night. A sign in the
street leading down to the hotel said, GRAND HOTELPROPER DRESS REQUIRED AT
THE HOTEL AND HOTEL-OWNED STREET. GENTLEMEN AFTER 6 P.M. MUST
BE ATTIRED IN A COAT AND TIE. LADIES MAY NOT BE ATTIRED IN SLACKS.
This is possibly the only place in the world where you are told how to dress just to walk
down the street. Another sign said a charge would be levied on anyone coming into the
hotel just to gawp. Honestly. I suppose they have a lot of trouble with day-trippers. I
walked stealthily down the road towards the hotel half expecting to see a sign saying,
“ANYONE PASSING BEYOND THIS POINT WEARING PLAID PANTS OR WHITE
SHOES WILL BE ARRESTED.” But there wasn't anything. I had it in my mind to put
my head in the front door, just to see what lifeis like for really rich people, but there was a
liveried doorman standing guard, so I had to beat a retreat.
I caught the afternoon ferry back to the mainland, and drove over the Mackinac Bridge to
thechunkoflandMichigan peoplecall theUpperPeninsula. Beforethebridgewasbuiltin
'1957, this bit of Michigan was pretty well cut off from its own state, and even now it has
an overwhelming sense of remoteness. It is mostly just a bleak and sandy peninsula, '150
miles long, squeezed between three of the Great Lakes, Superior, Huron and Michigan.
Once again, I was almost in Canada. Sault Ste. Marie was just to the north. Its great locks
connect Lake Huron and Lake Superior and are the busiest in the world, carrying a greater
volume of tonnage than the Suez and Panama canals combined, believe it or not.
I was on Route 2, which follows the northern shoreline of Lake Michigan for most of its
length. It is impossible to exaggerate the immensity of the Great Lakes. There are five of
them, Erie, Huron, Michigan, Superior and Ontario, and they stretch 700 miles from top to
bottom, g00 miles from east to west. They cover 94,500 square miles, making them almost
precisely the size of the United Kingdom. Together they form the largest expanse of fresh
water on earth.
Moresquallystormswereatworkfaroutonthelake,thoughwhereIwasitwasdry.About
twenty miles offshore were a group of islands-Beaver Island, High Island, Whiskey Is-
land, Hog Island and several others. High Island was once owned by a religious sect called
the House of David, whose members all had beards and specialized, if you can believe it,
in playing baseball. In the 1920s and '30s they toured the country taking on local teams
wherevertheywentandIguesstheywerejustaboutunbeatable.HighIslandwasreputedly
a kind of penal colony for members of the sect who committed serious infractionsgroun-
ded into too many double plays or something. It was said that people were sent there and
