My month in Michigan

My take on Michigan

Where I went ...

... this month

The people
I found Michiganders to be friendly and helpful.  They seem to be very focused on getting into the out-of-doors, and the campgrounds were full of Michigan license plates.

Although it was warm this month, the temperature never got beyond the mid-80s.  Still, people stayed in the sun long enough to get sunburned, went swimming, kayaking, canoeing, fishing, boating, hiking.  This seemed to hold true for people from big cities who went out on weekends as well as for people who lived in more rural areas to be closer to the resources.

I might almost say they're a chatty bunch of folks.  I rarely had someone strike up a conversation with me on their own, but when I asked questions they didn't stint on their answers.

Nisu bread

The bread in this photo is something I found in the grocery store in Hancock.  I'd never heard of Nisu, which was the only label it had, so I asked at the counter.  The young woman told me it was a sort of cinnamon bread, and it was a local product from a Finnish recipe.  That makes sense with all the Finns that settled in this area.  And I'm able to report that it's quite tasty.


The land
Michiganders all seem completely in love with their state.  I met almost no one who showed even indifference to the state - they all said they loved where they were living, and in most cases, what they loved was the setting.  Many said they liked the small-town feel of where they lived, which happened even in some more populated areas.  But most all over the state said they liked being close to "the lake."   They were rarely talking about the same lake because almost everywhere in Michigan is close to some lake or another.  Not only is it surrounded by one or other of the Great Lakes, but it also has hundreds of small lakes scattered all over.

Michigan is a land of trees and crop fields and water.  It has a few major cities that are sprawling out into their surrounding areas, but most of the state is rural.

When people heard I was spending the month traveling around the state, they usually suggested places to see, and almost all of them were natural resources: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Tahquamenon Falls, Copper Harbor, Pictured Rocks National Seashore.


The drivers
Drivers here are generally polite, though they don't go out of their way for it like Indianans do.  They continue the trend I saw in Ohio and Indiana of moving over to let other cars on to the highways, but they love to speed on those highways.

Most are safe drivers, I think, because the speeding doesn't usually lead them to risky behavior otherwise.  As long as I stayed out of their way, I felt comfortable.  And I could stay out of the way because people didn't tailgate me just because they wanted to go faster.


What I didn't see that I wanted to see
Although you can see from the map above that I covered a lot of ground, I still missed a great deal.  I think the late spring or early fall would be a much better time to visit here, because of less competition for campsites.

I had to give Sleeping Bear Dunes a complete pass, which I hated to do because I'd been looking forward to it.  But there were almost no campsites available at all in the area, even during the week - too many vacationers, I guess.  Tahquamenon Falls and Pictured Rocks seashore were the same thing.

I'd have to stay a fair distance away from any of these and that doesn't work with my situation:  I need to do like I did at the dunes in Indiana where I stayed right by the dunes and got up early and was able to take the dogs out before anybody else showed up.  I also don't have to worry about parking and leaving the dogs when I do it early enough or have a shady place to park.  That's the only reason I was able to get away with spending a few hours on Mackinac Island - the campground had tons of trees and a shuttle so I could leave the critters in the shade.

I'm sure if I went back in May or September, for instance, I'd have a much better chance of getting decent places to stay, while still being able to use the various facilities - for instance, the only real way to get a view of the Pictured Rocks is to take a boat tour, and they only run during tourist season.

In my daily posts this month, I've mentioned here and there places I was having to miss due to lack of time, and I won't repeat them here.

But there were also: a free tour at the milling company that makes Jiffy mixes, which I've bought before; an arboretum at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (free) that has 230 kinds of peonies; Diego River murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts; a farmers market in Detroit; a bottle cap museum in Grayling; many many lighthouses; the Museum of Ojibwa Culture in St. Ignace; a copper mine that offers tours near Copper Harbor; Lake of the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains (though Michigan's mountains don't look like much more than hills to me, but it's still pretty country).

Michigan also has several historic trains that are still operating: The Grand Valley Rail Road near Charlotte is the US's longest continually operating dinner train; The Toonerville Trolley in the Upper Peninsula; the Tecumseh-Southern Michigan Railroad; and one between Coopersville and Grand Haven.


Conclusion
There's a lot to see in Michigan, not even counting it being a wonderful setting to relax in and not do anything.

I liked Michigan a lot and I liked the people here (all except the jerk that owns that first KOA near Muskegon - the exception that proves the rule, I guess).  In general people I met seemed to be the live-and-let-live sort.

Michigan seems to have something for everyone.  If you're not a frantically outdoorsy type (which I'm not), there's plenty of more urban places - even smaller ones like Kalamazoo.  And there's a wide variety of attractions to suit every interest.

Michiganders also tell me their winters aren't particularly severe - even those in the Upper Peninsula, though if there are many snowmobiles around, "severe" might be a relative term.  Apparently, the weather along the Lake Michigan coastal region is fairly benign year round, which may explain why the Holland area seemed to have so many retirees.  I can certainly see the attraction.

I definitely want to go back and spend more time there, though I'm not sure even a Great Lake can substitute for the ocean enough for me to want to live there.  But absolutely a good place to visit again.