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Mackinac Island

Three nights and two full days on Mackinac gave us enough time to both explore the sights and sounds as well as relax before moving on. Below are my top 4 musts while on Mackinac Island as well as a quick review of the Grand Hotel.

Hike to Arch Rock about a mile outside of town. You can either walk the M-185 and then up 200+ stairs or walk up the hill taking you behind Fort Mackinac before following the street over towards the rock. Carriage tours also stop for a brief look at the arch. On the morning we hiked up, fog blocked our view out to the lake but the cooler temperature meant a more enjoyable walk out and back to town.
Swing by Moomers Ice Cream for a flight of four flavors. *Warning – it may be a better idea to split of flight rather than everyone getting their own!* The Traverse City Cherry and Mint Chocolate Chip flavors were outstanding. We ate inside and felt like an advertisement for the ice cream flight – everyone coming in said something about the array of ice cream in front of us.
Visit Fort Mackinac for an historic overview of the island and the views overlooking downtown. Upon entering Fort Mackinac, make your first stop the short video explaining the military and trading history of the island. From there, you can circle around to explore the military buildings and learn what life was like for soldiers in the 1700 and 1800s. Even if you’re not a history buff, the views from the top of the hill make the visit worthwhile and made a nice escape from the crowds downtown.
Relax on the world’s longest porch at the Grand Hotel. If you’re not staying at The Grand, visitors can pay $10 for access to the property including gardens, porch, on site bars and shops. The front porch offers views of the lighthouse and gardens as well as the place to be seen.

Speaking of the Grand Hotel, this 397 room resort was the highlight of our week long trip. Originally, a stay wasn’t in our budget but I just happened to look at their website the day of a flash sale offering significant discounts on rooms with a breakfast and dinner package included. The reduced price tag was still over budget but well worth the splurge when you calculate that dinner retails for about $90 per person. At check-in, the clerk tried to up-sell everyone to a lake view room for an extra $100 each night. Don’t take it! The interior rooms were large and just perfectly decorated. You aren’t at the grand to sit in your room and stare out the window anyway. To relax and enjoy the view, go down to the parlor, front porch, or up to the Cupola Bar.

A Great Lakes Road Trip, During A Pandemic

By early summer, it became apparent our epic trip to Ireland was not to be this year. I wasn’t about to let COVID-19 get in the way of wanderlust and came up with Plan-B, a road trip up to Mackinac Island, Michigan and then across the Upper Peninsula over to Duluth, Minnesota before heading back to Nebraska, taking a total of 7 days.

Days 1 and 2 were travel days from Nebraska to St. Ignace, with a night in Hammond, Indiana and a lunch at Gobbler’s of Gaylord. The 14 hours was a bit too much to attempt in one day and taking 2 days allowed us to slow down a bit for some quick sightseeing.

If you ever pass the following, pull over and spend a few minutes. Both of these make a great place to stretch your legs.

West Branch, IA is home to Herbert Hoover’s Presidential Library and National Historic Site including his birthplace and home town. Currently, the library is closed until further notice but you can still wander around and see his boyhood home and places “Bert” would have passed every day growing up.
Gobbler’s of Gaylord in Gaylord, Michigan is right off I-75 on the way to Mackinac City. This small, diner type restaurant offers a full Thanksgiving style menu in four different serving sizes. Right across the street is Cops & Doughnuts, owned and operated by the area police officers all proceeds go towards funding the police department.

After lunch, we finished our day by crossing the Mackinac Bridge over to St. Ignace and hopping on Shepler’s Ferry. Two ferry companies service both Mackinaw City and St. Ignace, Shepler’s and Star Line. Both have similar pricing and parking options. We chose Shepler’s solely due to their schedule from the Island back to the mainland as they offered a 9:00 departure, 30 minutes before the second departure for Star Line. The ferry takes about 15 minutes in either direction for either ferry line.

The ferry was less than half full and everyone wore a mask.

We spent 3 nights on the Island and spent 1 night at the Pontiac Lodge located right off the main street and directly across from Shepler’s dock. Pontiac Lodge was one of the cheapest lodging options on the island, especially since we booked only a few weeks in advance and needed a room with 2 beds. Location was the best thing about Pontiac Lodge, offering us the ability to explore the shops without getting too far away. While the beds were comfortable and the room seemed clean enough, the staff were aloof and didn’t go out of the way to offer any customer service or information. While we are mostly self-sufficient and were okay with 1 night here, I was very happy to have booked the next 2 nights at The Grand Hotel. The experience was vastly different between the two.

We ended on our first night on the island with dinner and some shopping. After the last couple of ferries departed the island for the night, the shops became easier to browse without feeling crowded. While 90% of people had masks on, social distancing was impossible to enforce on the busy street and this first evening ended up being the best time to shop. By mid-morning the next day, the streets were elbow-to-elbow full. My hope when booking this trip was that crowds would be smaller since school is in session and we were visiting during the week. However, this didn’t appear to be the case at all.

Nice stroll along the lake front. Flowers were still in full bloom!

The sweet smell of fresh fudge! I don’t think we were ever more than 50 feet from a fudge shop!

Stay tuned for the next 2 days on Mackinac Island covering Fort Mackinac, the famous arch, and The Grand Hotel.

Remember When: Centennial Festival of Riverboats and the Belle of Louisville’s 100th Birthday

In 2014, the city of Louisville, Kentucky hosted a multi-day event for the Belle of Louisville’s 100th birthday! Not only could festival goers enjoy cruises on the birthday boat but several others boats, including the B&B Riverboats fleet, Spirit of Peoria, and even the American Queen made the trip to town for the party. In 20 years, will there be a 125th celebration?

Theodore Tugboat

Halifax, Nova Scotia is home to a friendly little tugboat. If you haven’t heard of Theodore Tugboat, he was the main character of a children’s show in the 1980s and 1990s. See the intro song here.

During the tourism season (ending in late October), he welcomes fans for a 30 minute tour of the Halifax harbor and introduces you to his friends from the show. This experience is not only for kids. In fact, of the 13 on board, only 3 were kids. Thirty minutes may seem a bit short but was a perfect amount of time to explore the harbor.

Rolling Down the River to Memphis

Memphis, specifically Mud Island, was on my list for several years. Maybe I expected too much from the city because the long weekend included several let-downs. A year later, however, most of my memories are positive.

Problems started right off the bat. Our hotel had issues with our reservation, we left our luggage to go explore the city hoping to come back to a clean King room only to find two queens. We stayed downtown and were steps away from the Blues Hall of Fame Museum and National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel. Both were moving experiences, one to remember great musicians and one to remember Martin Luther King Jr..

After enjoying the afternoon, my driver’s license flung out of my pocket near Beale Street. The sad part is, I didn’t even partake in the fun of Beale Street and wasn’t able to after losing my only ID. Furthermore, we soon found out riding a scooter wasn’t an option – they require a driver’s license too. To top it off – I started a new job the following Monday and I needed my driver’s license for orientation. Asking to come-in late the first week of a brand new job is not something I recommend. Losing my license overshadowed the whole weekend but we continued on and tried to make the most of it.

The next day, we trekked across the bridge to Mud Island Riverpark. Given, we made this trip in early November past peak tourism season, the museum on the island was closed but we could still access the Mississippi River model on the island. In the summer months, the model river is full of water and flows all the way to Gulf of Mexico. This weekend, crunchy leaves replaced water and the whole island looked unkept. One of these days, I’ll make it back to see the island in the Summer and give the model a fair chance.

From there, we walked down to the Bass Pro Shops store in the pyramid. This was the most unexpected delight during the trip and I highly recommend a visit. The store itself has several different areas with wildlife. Ducks wandered from pond to pond through the store and, as you can see, didn’t mind shoppers coming very close. You can also go bowling, eat in a couple of restaurants, see several aquariums, and pet alligators. Okay, maybe not actually pet the alligators, but you can wave from a safe distance.

Spend the extra few dollars to take the elevator to the top of the pyramid for the best view in town. From here, you can walk out to the observation decks to see the boats and towboats ply the river and enjoy the restaurant at the top. The grits were out of this world!

Something else on my bucket list was seeing the Peabody ducks. Glad I saw them but not much else to say here. If you’re in Memphis, take a few minutes to see the ducks but they aren’t worth a special trip. The hotel lobby itself is a bit crowded and stuffy and the ducks weren’t anything special. The ducks at the Bass Pro Shop beat these ducks any day!

Most of the time, I schedule every activity for trips way before hand but since this trip was changed at the last minute, the only thing scheduled was a dinner cruise with Memphis Riverboats. What a great way to end the weekend! Good food and good music but the best part was watching the light show on the bridge. I haven’t seen anything quite like this anywhere else and made for a romantic end to the trip.

2 Boats, 1 Day

Working in the tourism industry, I don’t get much time off in the summer. In fact, this weekend was the only ful weekend I had until after Labor Day. When browsing weekend trip options, I checked the Riverboat Twilight website to see if they happened to be doing sightseeing. We hit the jackpot – my open Saturday was the one day in July they were running 90 minute sightseeing.

Twilight is one of my favorite riverboats. The cheery white and blue exterior is well kept. The interior is picture perfect. Rocking chairs are located throughout the exterior decks and filled up within moments of boarding. Families chatted with each other throughout the afternoon while keeping an eye out for the dream homes dotting the shores. After about 30 minutes of relaxing, we were ready to explore – specifically the gift shop located on the stern of first deck.

Now, I am a bit of a gift shop junky and this one offers some phenomenal t-shirts! There are three things one needs in a t-shirt – soft material, cute picture or saying, and great fit – this selection checks all three boxes. Some of the souvenir t-shirts I purchase rarely get worn and are stashed in my closet to be made into a quilt some day. Others, and my Riverboat Twilight will be one of these, I wear every time I get the chance. Maybe I should have purchased two!

On the deck of the Riverboat Twilight.

Beautiful, well maintained interior.

After disembarking, we made the quick drive to downtown Moline, IL to check into our hotel, catch a quick shower, and catch cruise two aboard the Celebration Belle.

Interior of the Celebration Belle

Towboat heading downriver

Hannibal to Quad Cities Road Trip on the Great River Road

Come along as we make a road trip up the Great River Road from Hannibal to Le Claire while stopping at some great boating and river history sights.

Hannibal is a must see for every Riverlorian. For this trip, we used this quintessential river town as a jumping off point and only spent a few waking hours there. After arriving, we took a stroll around town and enjoyed the live music and active night life before making the climb up 244 steps to the Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse. In daylight, I am sure this is a magnificent view. At 10:00 PM, all we accomplished were very sore knees the next morning.

Bright and early the next morning, we slowly made our way up to Le Claire, Iowa by taking the Great River Road. This route weaves in an out of river towns and gives glimpses of the Mississippi River along the way. My goal was to stop at as many historical markers and out of the way places as our time allowed.

In Keokuk, IA we toured the George M. Verity. The friendly volunteers were opening everything up for the day when we arrived and offered us a guided tour. This vessel is much like a smaller version of the William M. Black located in Dubuque, IA or the Captain Meriwether Lewis, located in Brownville, NE. Admission is $4 per adult and well worth the stop, even if just for a chance to stretch your legs.

Inside the Captain’s stateroom on the Verity

Up the road about 30 minutes, we detoured through Nauvoo, IL. By this time, it was almost 10:00 and tourists were already roaming the streets and enjoying carriage rides. This historic town has been on my list to visit for quite some time, although we only spent around 30 minutes walking around. Since I am not Mormon, I felt a little out of place and would recommend various other historic towns for a visit over this one (see the Amana Colonies description in a future post). My favorite photo opportunity in town was this replica ferry boat once used to transport the wagons across the river to start their journey on the Mormon Trail.

Soon, we came to Burlington, IA and Muscatine, IA. While we didn’t get any pictures, I recommend a drive down Snake Alley in Burlington.

Finally, we made it to Le Claire with about an hour and a half to explore before boarding the Riverboat Twilight.

The American Pickers show seems to have made this a popular place for day trips. Normally, I try to steer clear of touristy places, but this town is well worth a few hours of your time. We did make a quick tour of Antique Archaeology, mainly for bragging rights. If you are looking for a warehouse full of antiques, look elsewhere as you will mainly find souvenirs now.

We purchased some flavored garlic olive oil and mushroom pasta at the Le Claire Olive Oil company before touring the Buffalo Bill Museum located right on the river and next to the dock. To be honest, I didn’t look at any of the Buffalo Bill exhibits as there wasn’t anything unique. Most of the antiques and artifacts are in every small town museum I’ve been through. We really paid the $5 to tour the Lone Star Stern Wheeler! This wood hulled boat was used from 1869 to 1889 and makes one imagine why most wooden boats had a short life span. One can easily dream about the constant creaking these boats would have constantly made. The museum has built an addition to house the boat and protect the wood from the elements, which makes it a great place to escape the summer heat.

The Buffalo Bill Museum also houses several model boats. As I am also a collector of dollhouses and miniatures, I snapped several pictures and below is one of my favorite.

A model boat

Side view of the Lone Star Side Wheeler

Now it was time to board the Riverboat Twilight. Stay tuned for a future post!

The River Which Draws Me In

An Introduction

Rivers have always been part of my life; I grew up working on the Missouri River. Although my life has moved on, I am still drawn to boats and the change of pace rivers offer. Come join me on my journey to ride 100 boats.

So far, I have enjoyed rides on more than 15 boats across the country. My most recent trip was to the Quad Cities to enjoy two in one day. Stay tuned for the reviews.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — BB Riverboats flagship Belle of Cincinnati

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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