Category United States of America

Tranquil Bluff Trail

Tranquil Bluff Trail traces 3 miles of bluffs along the eastern side of Mackinac Island from Arch Rock to British Landing. The route is moderately difficult, with many inclines and declines, but possibly the most challenging part of the path is staying on it. The trail is barely indistinguishable from the rest of the forest floor and several times we only realized that we had wandered off the trail because we found ourselves in a clump of dense brush.

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Arch Rock

Arch Rock is the de facto tourist stop on Mackinac Island. Rising 146 feet above the shoreline, the natural limestone arch forms a particularly noteworthy appendage to Mackinac Island's bluffs. It has been a place of myth and legend to local tribes and a popular stop for early tourists. Indeed, the arch was a deciding factor in establishing Mackinac National Park back in 1975.*

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Mackinac Island

The most important thing to remember about Mackinac Island is to call it "Mackinaw Island." It would be a devastating faux pas to pronounce the silent "c." After that, one might want to make some airy allusion to dinner at the Grand Hotel, which charges any non-hotel guest $10 just to enter the grounds. Mackinac Island is a place of meticulous refinement. While it may be suspended between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan the island's classic victorian mansions and elegant hotels tell a different tale. This 3.8 square mile island might as well have been plucked from some east coast seaside village and dropped in Lake Huron.

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Monarchs In Minnesota

There are monarch butterflies in Minnesota. To locals, this is no surprise. But to me, I was impressed. Monarchs can travel up to 3000 miles to their winter grounds in Mexico. These are the only butterflies to travel such great distances. And yet, in the summer, many return to Minnesota, where they were born.

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Lake Country

Minnesota comes from the Dakota word for "clear blue water." It's an appropriate name for the Land of 10,000 lakes. The Dakota, along with the Ojibwe, eventually found themselves contending for these lakes with the state's early European settlers: emigrants from Scandinavia and Germany. The communities that sprouted from these northern European roots became fodder for Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon and other portions of his celebrated radio show: Prairie Home Companion. Despite the Olly and Lena jokes, the state is ranked among the best educated in the United States. Even so, with winters recorded as low as −60 °F, there's a reason we crossed the border in the summer.

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