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***For 2011 events,
visit here.
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Mackinac Island
Lilac Festival
June 11-20, 2010
Springtime graces Mackinac Island in June, and the hundreds of lilac trees and bushes that bloom throughout the island are celebrated in an annual 10-day event.
Festivities include horsedrawn Lilac tours, coronation of the Lilac Festival Queen, wine tastings, live music, restaurant specials, a "Dog & Pony Show," and a Lilac Festival 10K.
The Festival concludes with the annual Grand Parade. All floats are horse-drawn.
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Mackinac Island Music Festival
August 17-19, 2010
Enjoy festivitities and live performances by local musicians as well as musicians around the country. For more information, visit here.
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***For 2011 events, visit here.
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A Romantic's Perspective Travel Notions
Summer, 2010 [ARCHIVE]
An Island getaway
in the upper Midwest
Mackinac Island rises like a shell of a tortoise, round and plush with foliage, between the Michigan Upper and Lower Peninsulas. Only water vessels or airplanes may land visitors here.
It's a seasonal island, that sleeps in the winter, with 500 permanent residents who are willing to cross the ice should they need to meet the outside world.
The Island wakes for late spring, summer and early autumn, when the ferries may arrive via freshwater. Now it blossoms with lilacs and tulips, daffodils and geraniums. Its hotels open, its gift shops and antique shops, its boutiques, restaurants and taverns. The island is ready to receive the 700,000 annual visitors.
Most visitors arrive via ferry downtown, and the porters assure their safe horse-drawn transportation to their hotels. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the island. That makes this getaway remote more than geographically. It transports tourists to a peaceful rhythm they might not otherwise find.
Although downtown Mackinac Island bustles with ferryboat horns, porters' calls, and hundreds of folks crossing paths via horse transport, bicycles or by foot, there remains an underlying tranquility per absence of car horns, absence of revving engines or humming motors.
The farther one gets from Main Street, where the ferry lines dock, the more resounding the hoofbeats along the streets, the more audible the whispers or whirrings of the island's surrounding waters.
More information:
Mackinac Island is three miles wide and four miles long. The island's main thoroughfare is Michigan State Highway 185, an eight-mile lakeshore road that encircles the island. It's the shortest Highway in the United States, and the only one that bans motorized vehicles.
Visitors may enjoy boutiques and specialty shops, and historical landmarks like Fort Mackinac that was built in 1780. There are horse-drawn tours to showcase Mackinac Island history, and historical and landmark sites.
Yet all one needs to do is to reserve overnight accommodations, and to land here. They will feel the getaway.
*photos provided by MackinacIsland.org
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A Romantic's Perspective presented through Detour Productions, LLC. copyright © 2010.
All rights reserved.
About "A romantic's perspective" Contact Jacquee T.'s poetry book |
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Jacquée T. writes about travel destinations that she, as a romantic, recommends.
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