Michigan’s lilac festival? It’s bloomin’ marvellous
Olivia, a beauty queen, parts her carmine lips and flashes a bright smile. Could I take a photo for my report, I ask? ‘Hey baby cake,’ she exclaims, ‘let’s do a selfie!’ Olivia is a national cherry queen – I’m at the 75th Grand Parade of the annual 10-day
Lilac Festival on Mackinac Island, Lake Michigan, in the American Midwest.
Every year the island explodes in a riot of colour to celebrate its 250 varieties of lilac (this year’s festival runs from June 7-16). In reality, it’s an excuse for an oldfashioned beano. There are daily walking tours and planting sessions, a Lilac Festival Run, movies in the colonial fort, plus the crowning of a lilac queen.
Michigan is a peninsula on the Canadian border, circumscribed by the Great Lakes. I had flown into its largest city, Detroit, and took a road trip to Mackinac, first heading to the town of Holland on Lake Michigan’s east bank. I then visited Windmill Island Gardens, where flour is still ground using the only authentic Dutch windmill in the US. I also strolled through Sleeping Bear Dunes national park, which was recently voted the US’s most beautiful place. Back in Mackinac I watch the rest of the parade from a balcony at the Bicycle Street Inn, where there’s a curious whiff in the air of horse dung mixed with fudge.
Mackinac makes the bold claim of being the ‘Fudge Capital of the World’, producing 250 tons of the stuff every year, while the only means of transport are bicycle or horse and carriage.
So I cycle the 13km circumference both ways, stopping only for a swim or a beer – the beaches and coves are beautiful and secluded.
I am billeted at the Grand Hotel. It has a 660ft verandah – the world’s biggest – looking on to Lake Michigan. It was built in 90 days by 600 men in 1886. Originally settled by Native Americans, one of the island’s first advertising slogans was, ‘Come to Mackinac Island, where the soldiers shoot daily upon the Indians for your safety’. And there is indeed a restored colonial fort just a short clip-clop from my hotel.