The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Checking in to the past
If there ever was a place where time travel was possible, it would be at Michigan’s Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.
That’s where the film “Somewhere in Time” was set. The 1980 film, which has a cult following, portrays a modern-day playwright played by Christopher Reeve and his time travel to pursue a romance with a 1912 stage actress, played by Jane Seymour. It was filmed in 1979 at the Grand Hotel.
I had my own quasi-timetravel experience during an early June visit to what has become known as America’s Summer Place, where spring was back in full force. Lilacs, long gone from my yard in Ohio, were blooming splendidly along with trilliums, lilies of the valley and other spring flowers on Mackinac Island.
The Grand Hotel, built in 1887 and owned and operated by the third generation of the Musser family, celebrates its 130th anniversary this year. Its “Somewhere in Time” weekend, set for Oct. 27 to 29, is again expected to be one of its most popular theme packages for those coming to stay at the 393-room landmark.
Other tributes to the past at the Grand Hotel include afternoon tea, croquet on the lawns, a dress code after 6 p.m. and dancing the evening away to live music.
The hotel was built in 90 days during the winter by 600 workmen who were paid three times the mainland wage. When they arrived on the island and saw what hardship they faced, they voted to go on strike. But the hotel owner had brought them there and told them if they struck, he would not take them back to the mainland. So they went to work.
It was an era when millionaire industrialists, hampered by far fewer laws and taxes than there are today, sought summer getaways from the smoky, dirty Midwest cities of Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland into the breezy clean air of an island in the Straits of Mackinac, between Lakes Superior and Huron. Just as the transcontinental railways financed the building of large hotels in Canada, the railways and Great Lakes steamship lines, which brought passengers to Mackinac, helped finance the building of the Grand Hotel.
To this day, no cars or other motorized vehicles are permitted on the island in Lake Huron between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. It’s reached from the mainland by ferry with luggage and hotel guests transported to their lodging by horse-drawn carriages. Bicycles are a popular way to get around and many visitors bring their own, although rentals abound. Horse-drawn carriages arrive and depart the entrance to the Grand Hotel, below its 660-foot long porch lined with red geraniums.
The island is home to just 600 year-round residents, although thousands of folks come in the summer to stay at the Grand Hotel or another among the island’s small hotels and guest houses. Quite a few people come just for the day, strolling the village to buy fudge, exploring the 1780 Fort Mackinac and paying $10 to visit the Grand Hotel. Despite its spelling, the island’s name is pronounced Mackin-naw.
Thanks to its considerable preservation efforts, the entire island has been named an National Historic Landmark.
It’s a slow-paced, quiet kind of place defined by the clip-clop of horse hoofs and the lapping of waves on the shore. The air is washed by the water that surrounds the island, and its piney forests inland also lend their scent. Time moves slowly on Mackinac Island when you get around by foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage.
There is no tipping at the Grand Hotel, unless you choose to dine at one of the hotel’s off-site restaurants, which don’t require a jacket and tie for gentlemen. A full breakfast and five-course dinner is included in rates, which also can be configured to allow for lunch. The rates, which start at $159 per person, may seem pricey, until figuring the value for the money spent. Many packages also include a greens fee on its 18-hole golf course and other amenities. A horsedrawn taxi to and from town is about $5.
A five-course dinner is served in the hotel’s Salle A Manger dining room, which can serve 1,000 diners at a time and gives most of them a view of the porch and the lake beyond. The required jackets and ties for gentlemen and dresses or coordinated pant suits for ladies extend to their offspring, although children 9 and under stay free at the Grand Hotel. Those who are 10 to 17 cost $59 per night, while those 18 and older pay $139 per night. Non-hotel guests can also dine at the Grand, paying $30 for breakfast, $47 for the luncheon buffet or
$80 for the five-course dinner. Meals are rotated by the week and unlikely to be duplicated.
As we were disembarking on the island from Shepler’s Ferry from Mackinaw City on the mainland, we saw another ferry offloading its cargo of baled hay. Hay to feed the island’s 600 horses is delivered by boat every day, along with everything else that comes to the island.
We learned that in the winter the horses are taken to the mainland because ferry service stops when the lake freezes and it is too expensive to bring hay by air to Mackinac Island. The tiny island airport accommodates only private and charter flights.
The Grand Hotel is open from May through October, as are many other island businesses.
My room was the Josephine Suite on the western end of the Parlour Level. I was stunned at its beauty when I opened the door. Furnishings, including the bed, antique mirrored chifferobe and dressing table were ornately hand-carved with cherubs. Wall coverings were designed like draped fabric. Two chairs and a comfy sofa were in front of the wall of white shuttered windows.
Rooms and public areas, designed by Carleton Varney of the well-known Dorothy Draper Design Co., all are different from one another and furnished with many antiques.
My guest room was very glamorous, and definitely not me, but once I tested the bed I knew I would have a difficult time leaving. Although I was there for a busy professional meeting, I planned then and there to enjoy at least one room-service breakfast in this lovely suite.
Peering out through the wall of white shutters, I discovered my room was on the same level as the hotel’s 660-foot-long porch, first viewed from the water as we approached the island by ferry. Looking through the slats, I saw rocking chairs lined up on the porch and a big American flag waving from its railing, where row
Go to grandhotel.com to learn about packages and amenities.
The Mackinac Island Convention
upon row of bright red geraniums were planted. I figured I’d be able to find the spot again by locating the large flag when I walked the porch.
I left to join a welcome reception organized for our group on that same porch, walking through the long parlor with carpeting showing huge geraniums past its 14 pairs of matched green wing chairs to exit to the long porch area lined with 100 white rocking chairs along its 260-foot length. Once there, I quickly discovered that at least 20 giant flags waved in the lake breeze from the long porch railing, and I had no chance of locating my room from the outside.
The porch is a majestic platform for guests to view the splendors of Mackinac Island — from the colorful, well-kept gardens below, to the vast blue lake beyond and the Mackinac Bridge in the distance. That 5-milelong bridge connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower peninsulas.
In the hotel’s early years, it became a meeting place, a promenade, and a “flirtation walk” for island romantics. It is lined with more than 300 flower boxes containing 2,500 bright red Americana geraniums, the flower that has become an icon for the Grand Hotel.
When I met with Drew Butterfield, the Grand’s director of grounds and an Ohio State University grad, I discovered that the geraniums
& Visitors Bureau at www.mackinacisland. org has information about the village, the many lodging and dining options and activities on the island.
Shepler’s Ferry connects passengers from Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island for about $24 round-trip when tickets are ordered in advance and www.sheplersferry.com. Call 800-8286157 for information.
Visitors from Cleveland need to fly into either Traverse City or Pellston Michigan for transfer to Mackinaw City and the ferry.
are dug up each fall and replaced the following spring. Guests who are there on Oct. 30 — the end of the Grand Hotel’s season — can take with them a geranium or two to winter over and plant in their home landscape.
Tulips were being dug up and replaced by annuals during my visit. Tulip bulbs will be planted in October for blooming in spring 2018. The hotel is on a bluff well above the town and the lake. Plantings on the hillside are poppies, daffodils and other perennials. It has ideal conditions for lilacs, brought here by the island’s French discoverers. They proliferate all over the island, and some have grown to a great age. White lilacs are the most fragrant, Butterfield said, and many bloom a little later than purple and lavender lilacs. I was sorry to learn I’d be leaving before the annual island-wide Lilac Festival. The 69th annual Lilac Festival took place June 9 through 18.
The Grand Hotel has 750 employees hailing from from 28 countries — a virtual United Nations of staff. They generally work from May to October and return home in the winter, where their Grand Hotel training in areas such as fine dining, housekeeping and grounds, qualifies for very good jobs in their homelands. From the guest point-of-view, a smile and beyond-the-call effort is experienced in every staff encounter.