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REGION
THIRTEEN
Les Cheneaux Islands, Drummond Island & the St. Mary's River
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Among rocky isles, marshes and northwoods forests, an unhurried paradise for fishermen, sailors, nature-lovers & boat-watchers.
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THIS QUIET EASTERNMOST END of the Upper Peninsula has an aura all its own. It is close to the Lower Peninsula — it's a little over an hour from the Mackinac Bridge to the Drummond Island ferry — but it's definitely off the beaten path even for U.P. residents. The St. Mary's River between the Eastern Upper Peninsula and Ontario links Lake Superior with Lake Huron, and also with Lake Michigan
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via the nearby Straits of Mackinac.
This area has Michigan's greatest concentration of islands. Islands have long been important places in the area economy, starting with the Ojibwa maple sugar center on Sugar Island, to today's second homes on many islands.
Most of the entire U.P. east from St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie has depended on boats for its livelihood: first canoes; then 19th century lumber schooners, the Mackinaw boats of early commercial fishermen, and Great Lakes passenger steamships; to today's recreational power boats, sailboats, and kayaks, and the self-unloading freighters of Michigan Limestone.
Kevin and Laurie Hillstrom's excellent Paddling Michigan highlights as kayaking destinations (especially for more experienced paddlers) Les Cheneaux (islands and channels south of Cedarville) and Drummond Island.
The historic Great Lakes superhighway from Montreal and the Atlantic into the heart of the North American continent included the St. Mary's River and the North Channel into Georgian Bay. That canoe route was used by native peoples and by the voyageurs who brought the forest animals' furs to Quebec, where they were shipped to European markets.
Today the river, artfully depicted in the 1930s children's classic Paddle to the Sea/i>, has become one of the world's great shipping highways. During U.S. Prohibition, when the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages remained legal in Canada, the St. Mary's was known as "Whiskey River," though there were far fewer rumrunners here than in the other Whiskey Rivers between Detroit and Windsor, and between Michigan towns on the St. Clair River and Sarnia, Ontario, south to Lake St. Clair.
The St. Mary's River between Lake Huron and Lake Superior forms the borderbetween the eastern U. P. and Canada. (Some wolves and moose have migrated across its frozen waters.) The river is also complex and interesting for American boaters. They can easily visit places like the remnants of the British fort at the southern tip of historic St. Joseph's Island on the Ontario side, now a National Historic Site administered by Parks Canada. It would take hours to reach the fort site by car.
The St. Mary's has one scary disadvantage for small craft and novice paddlers and boaters: the two shipping lanes used by huge freighters, moving slowly and relentlessly along, unable to turn and avoid whatever may be in their paths. Munuscong Bay (also called Munuscong Lake), south of Munuscong and northeast of Pickford, is one place on the St. Mary's River where birders, duck hunters, and paddlers can safely get out on the water and explore an exceptionally rich habitat at their leisure.
For boatwatching, the St. Mary's is one of the very best places anywhere in the U.S., along with Detroit, Port Huron/Sarnia, and Sault Ste. Marie. DeTour parks, restaurants an in Barbeau and DeTour village and the state forest cabins and campground on Lime Island offer up-close views of a fair percentage of all bulk carriers and "salties" (ocean-going freighters) on the Great Lakes in a given year. A huge ship can carry up to 60,000 tons of Lake Superior iron ore from the Marquette and Mesabi ranges, if lake levels are high enough. (Now they aren't.) Other freighters ship wheat all over the world — on the order of 10 to 14 million tons a year — from the ports of Duluth-Superior and Thunder Bay, Ontario. It's fun to bone up on Great Lakes shipping and then bring your binoculars to take in the details of the slow-moving giants.
Drummond Island is across the narrow DeTour Passage from the illage of DeTour on the mainland Upper Peninsula. (The "De Tour" name goes back to the voyageurs. It means "turning point" and refers to the turn canoes made to enter the Straits of Mackinac.)
Drummond Island has only recently developed as a significant summer destination for city people from southern Michigan and the locus of their costly second homes. After the logging and commercial fishing eras, Drummond had become a fishing resort of modest summer cottages and tourist cabins. Things changed in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, with the auto industry's troubles, the bloom is off the rose.
Drummond is far and away Michigan's biggest island, 36 miles long. It first appeared as more than a tiny blip on the regional Midwestern radar screen in the 1980s, when Domino's pizza founder Tom Monaghan developed a Domino's corporate retreat on Potaganissing Bay. His retreat, enlarged over the years, has become the Drummond Island Resort, with one of Michigan's more distinctive golf courses. Drummond Island's atmosphere now can feel more like a suburban downstater's take on the north woods than the real thing.
Off Drummond Island's northwest side, the North Channel is a premiere destination for recreational sailors and boaters. The North Channel extends for 120 miles between Georgian Bay and St. Joseph's Island (on the Ontario side of the international boundary with Michigan). The channel, mostly in Canada, is formed on the south by Drummond Island in Michigan and in Ontario by Cockburn Island and long, irregular Manitoulin Island.
Starting in the 1890s, some of the wealthiest Midwestern families, founders of corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Eli Lilly, and Armour, built large, comfortable, but unpretentious summer homes on many of the 36 islands of Les Cheneaux. (Pronounced "LAY-shen-OH," it's French for "the channels.") The islands, also called "The Snows," are at Lake Huron's northern tip, off the small year-round harbor villages of Hessel and Cedarville.
The islands protect small craft from Lake Huron's waves and weather. The resorters' wood Chris-Crafts provided everyday transportation to their island homes and gave rise, starting in 1977, to Hessel's Antique Wooden Boat Show on the second Saturday in August. It's long been billed as the world's largest one-day wooden boat show.
In this part of the Eastern Upper Peninsula, the most striking scenery occurs where close-to-the-surface limestone bedrock meets the waters of northern Lake Huron in a vast variety of forms: islands and channels, rocky points,
offshore rocks, occasional bluffs, and sandy coves. The area's beauty is along the water, not just the Lake Huron shore but along the St. Mary's River, and on marshes by the water's edge and inland, too. "Forests of white cedar, balsam fir, white birch, and quaking aspen dominate the shores," states the web site of the Les Cheneaux Chamber of Commerce, in a description that fits the entire area.
"Hardwood forests of sugar maple and beech favor the deeper soils inland. Wetlands range from marshes along Lake Huron with their neighboring sedge meadows, to bogs with tamarack and black spruce and white cedar swamps. White and red pine tower above sand ridges and old beaches near the lakes." Several small businesses use cedar for shingles, posts, and furniture. Tassier's Sugar Bush in Cedarville makes maple syrup on a commercial scale.
Such diversity of habitat adds up to a wonderful environment for birds. Wetlands and many species of trees provide many kinds of cover and some food. There's lots of food in the form of bugs and fish. Moreover, the Lake Huron shore and St. Mary's River are parts of a major flyway from Canada to Central America. These factors "provides a constantly changing panorama for bird watchers," the Les Cheneaux Chamber of Commerce truthfully proclaims. It promotes birding as a low-impact form of recreation that brings visitors to resorts and motels in slower seasons of spring and fall.
A real attraction for birders is the spring warbler migration as seen on the south shores of both Drummond Island and the mainland south of M-13.
Attention is now being paid to the St. Mary's River as a flyway for migrating birds. The Petoskey-based Little Traverse Conservancy, active in the Eastern Upper Peninsula as well as the "tip of the mitt" below the bridge, has received a $1 million grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Council to purchase and protect five significant tracts on the St. Mary's. The tracts "provide important feeding, nesting, and resting habitat for a multitude of bird species as well as other wildlife," according to the conservancy.
Les Cheneaux has taken the lead in nature tourism in Michigan. Development is inevitable, its civic leaders reason, but a focus on nature tourism can modify development to be more in synch with their area's nature-loving, low-key, unpretentious lifestyle. First The Nature Conservancy had a Cedarville office and publicized its approach and its Les Cheneaux preserves.
The Eastern Upper Peninsula Nature Tourism Association (EUPENTA) has gotten tourism people from Curtis and Newberry to Drummond Island together (just that is a quite a trick), talking the same language, so that even a big snowmobile dealer is working for his community to provide a better visitor experience by developing nature trails and in-town sidewalks.
EUPENTA has developed an Eastern U.P. website for nature and cultural tourism — greatwaters.net— and its influence can be seen at lescheneaux.org. Jessie Hadley from southeast Michigan operates Woods and Waters Eco-tours (woodswaterecotours.com; 906-484-4157). Its offerings consist mostly of kayaking and mountain biking tours at Les Cheneaux and Drummond Island, and also sales and rentals of canoes, kayaks, and mountain bikes). She applies the principles of eco-tourism: small-scale, low-impact, educational and appreciative in tone, benefiting the local economy, contributing to local nonprofits for environmental protection.
Fishing, of course, is the area's oldest touristic attraction. Noted outdoors writer Tom Huggler points out in 50 More Michigan Rivers that the St. Mary's River is "one of the most diverse fisheries in North America. . . . [It is] home to more than 80 species of fish, at least 44 of which spawn in the system's four distinct fish habitat types: emergent wetlands, sand-gravel beaches, open waters and bays, and the St. Mary's Rapids. Besides fish native to the system, the river hosts migrants — everything from smelt to sturgeon — from lakes Superior and Huron. This incredible body of water is home to world-class Atlantic salmon in the rapids [DeTour also touts its salmon fishing], outstanding herring and whitefish, and many other gamefish species, including some in the trophy class."
The St. Mary's River is "the drain plug for Lake Superior," Huggler explains. It "carries a tremendous volume of water south for 68 miles to northern Lake Huron. . . . It ranks No. 8 among American rivers for rate of flow." However, the fishing isn't quite what it once was, Huggler adds, due to the impact of freighter traffic, Indian gill-net fishing, and cormorants eating too many perch, with devastating effects in the fisheries of Les Cheneaux and elsewhere.
Except for the outstandingly beautiful, little traveled M-134 from DeTour to I-75 north of St. Ignace, the region's roads don't showcase most of the many low-key delights here—certainly not on Drummond Island or the St. Mary's River. There you have to refer to a map to reach water access points and see anything. The land inland is flat to rolling — no mountains, no waterfalls. A lot of it is farmland. Pickford is the agricultural center and the winter home of Mackinac Island's horses.
Much of M-134 wasn't paved until the 1960s. Especially between Cedarville and DeTour, M-134 affords views of a series of rocky points and little bays, some with sandy beaches and low dunes, others with marshes full of wildlife. A good deal of land just north of M-134 is state forest land, and M-134 seems part of a beautiful, magically under-used park. Frequent pulloffs make it easy to stop and watch birds, to swim, to beachcomb for the area's plentiful limestone fossils, or to walk into the low natural areas of birch, cedar, and hemlock. West from Cedarville to I-75, there's little real water access from M-134. It goes through a fair amount of marshland and forest in the Hiawatha National Forest.
Descriptions of natural areas along and off of M-134 can be found under Hessel, Cedarville, and DeTour. Here they are listed in order from west (the Mackinac Bridge) east to DeTour:
n Search Bay beach and St. Martin's Point hiking and ski trail (Hessel)
n Birge Nature Preserve, Point Brulee (Hessel)
n Mackinac Bay Scenic Overlook (Hessel)
n Prentiss Bay Marsh (Cedarville)
n Gerstacker Preserve (DeTour)
n Bailey Roadside Park (DeTour)
n De Tour State Forest Campground and St. Vital Point (DeTour)
Although there's no separate bicycle path, M-134 has extra-wide, two-foot paved shoulders that make for good bicycling. Summer residents are often seen walking along the shoulders enjoying the pristine scenery. Another plus for out-of-shape bicyclists: M-134 is quite flat. Mountain bikes would permit additional adventures, taking the often rough, unimproved roads south off M-134 out to the points, or on Drummond Island. For a delightful, lazy day, wear your swimsuit or shorts and good wading shoes. Bring binoculars for watching birds and boats.
The local culture in this area is a down-to-earth, pleasantly conservative mix of longtime summer people and local people largely descended from the area's farmers, sailors, and fishermen, and transplants and retirees drawn to the woods and water. Many have some French-Canadian and/or Native American heritage. One group of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians is just north of Hessel.
Just about everyone here, no matter what their background, shares a love of fishing, boating, and the outdoors. Maybe that's what makes it such a pleasant place.
THIS QUIET EASTERNMOST END of the Upper Peninsula has an aura all its own. It is close to the Lower Peninsula — it's a little over an hour from the Mackinac Bridge to the Drummond Island ferry — but it's definitely off the beaten path even for Upper Peninsula residents. The St. Marys River between the Eastern Upper Peninsula and Ontario links Lake Superior with Lake Huron and also with Lake Michigan via the nearby Straits of Mackinac.
This area has Michigan's greatest concentration of islands, and islands have long been important places in the area economy, starting with the Ojibwa maple sugar center on Sugar Island to today's second homes on many islands. Most of the entire U.P. east from St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie has depended onboats for its livelihood: first canoes, then 19th century lumber schooners, the Mackinaw boats of early commercial fishermen, and Great Lakes passenger steamships, to today's recreational power boats, sailboats, and kayaks and the self-unloading freighters of Michigan Limestone.
Kevin and Laurie Hillstrom's excellent Paddling Michigan highlights Les Cheneaux, Drummond Island, and Lime Island in the St. Marys River as kayaking destinations, especially for more experienced paddlers.
The St. Marys River and the North Channel into Georgian Bay were parts of the onetime Great Lakes highway from Montreal and the Atlantic into the heart of the North American continent. That canoe route was used by native peoples and by the voyageur who brought the forest animals' furs to Quebec, where they were shipped to European markets.
Today the river, artfully depicted in the 1930s children's classic Paddle to the Sea, has become one of the world's great shipping highways. During Prohibition, when the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was legal in Canada, the St. Marys was known as "Whiskey River," though there were far fewer rumrunners here than in the other Whiskey Rivers between Detroit and Windsor and between Michigan towns along the St. Clair River and the Canadian side from Sarnia, Ontario, south to Lake St. Clair.
Starting in the 1890s, some of the wealthiest Midwestern families, founders of corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Eli Lilly, and Armour, built large, comfortable summer homes on many of the 36 islands of Les Cheneaux. (Pronounced "LAY-shen-OH," it's French for "the channels.") Their lack of pretense contrasted with the nearby summer colonies of Mackinac Island and Harbor Springs. Not getting electricity until the 1950s kept the islands more rustic. Fishing and golf were resorters' principal pastimes. The islands, also called "The Snows," are at Lake Huron's northern tip, off the small year-round harbor villages of Hessel and Cedarville. The islands protect small craft from waves and weather on the big lake. The resorters' wood Chris-Crafts provided everyday transportation and gave rise to Hessel's Antique Wooden Boat Show in August, billed as the world's largest one-day wooden boat show.
Drummond Island is across the narrow DeTour Passage from the village of DeTour on the mainland Upper Peninsula (The "De Tour" name goes back to the voyageur. It means "turning point" and refers to the turn canoes made to enter the Straits of Mackinac.)
Drummond Island has only recently developed as a significant summer destination for city people from down below and the locus of their costly second homes. Until the 1980s and 1990s Drummond's development after logging and commercial fishing had been as a fishing resort of modest summer cottages and tourist cabins. Drummond is far and away Michigan's biggest island, 36 miles long. It first appeared as more than a tiny blip on the regional Midwestern radar screen in the 1980s, when Domino's pizza founder Tom Monaghan developed a Domino's corporate retreat on Potaganissing Bay. Local people were upset by his building projects, his influence, and that of Domino employees and VIP guests flying in. Today Monaghan is gone and his retreat, enlarged over the years, has become Drummond Island Resort, with one of Michigan's more distinctive golf courses.
Drummond Island has gone upscale since the early 1990s. Its atmosphere now feels more like a suburban downstater's take on the north woods than the real thing. (At least most Upper Peninsula residents would find it that way.) Drummond Island has lots of little islands and bays. They make appealing destinations for paddlers and small boaters, thanks to the protected waters on north-facing bays and the ever-changing vistas. Here you can rent a rowboat with a little outboard engine or a kayak and spend a delightful day meandering among the islands.
The St. Marys River between Lake Huron and Lake Superior forms the border between the eastern U. P. and Canada. It is also complex and interesting for American boaters, who can easily visit places like the remnants of the British fort at the southern tip of historic St. Joseph's Island on the Ontario side, now a National Historic Site administered by Parks Canada. It would take hours to reach the fort site by car.
The St. Marys has one scary disadvantage for small craft and novice paddlers and boaters: the two shipping lanes used by huge freighters, moving slowly and relentlessly along, unable to turn and avoid whatever may be in their paths. Munuscong Bay (also called Munuscong Lake) south of Munuscong and northeast of Pickford is one place on the St. Marys River where birders, duck hunters, and paddlers could safely get out on the water and explore an exceptionally rich habitat at their leisure.
The St. Marys River is one of the very best places anywhere (along with Detroit, Port Huron/Sarnia, Sault Ste. Marie, and the Straits of Mackinac) for boatwatching. Restaurants and ferry landings in Barbeau and DeTour village and the state forest cabins and campground on Lime Island offer up-close views of a fair percentage of all Great Lakes bulk carriers and "salties" (ocean-going freighters) on the lakes in a given year. A huge ship can carry up to 60,000 tons of Lake Superior iron ore from the Marquette and Mesabi ranges. Other freighters ship wheat all over the world — on the order of 10 to 14 million tons a year — from the ports of Duluth-Superior and Thunder Bay, Ontario. It's fun to bone up on Great Lakes shipping and then bring your binoculars to take in the details of the slow-moving giants.
For anyone the least bit interested in understanding the details of Great Lakes shipping, the Boatnerd website (www.boatnerd.com) and the current year's edition of Know Your Ships (the "boatwatcher's bible") are fascinating, indeed almost indispensable. Steamboats and Sailors of the Great Lakes by Mark Thompson, a freighter cook and an outstanding writer, gives an insider's overview of Great Lakes ships past and present. The Boatnerd site includes an excellent review of books about Great Lakes shipping and a map of current vessel positions on the Great Lakes, with vessel names grouped by fleet ownership (Oglebay Norton of Cleveland, Arnold Transit of Mackinac Island, Jumbo Shipping of Rotterdam, Netherlands, etc.). The "salties" category of visiting vessels from all over the world is especially interesting — and now of critical environmental importance. Their practice of emptying bilgewater into the Great Lakes is what introduced the freshwater zebra mussel (native to eastern Europe and west Asia), water milfoil (native to the Baltic), and other exotic creatures and plants that are disrupting the natural balance and affecting Great Lakes fish all the way up the food chain.
Off Drummond Island's northwest side, the North Channel is a premiere destination for recreational sailors and boaters. The North Channel extends for 120 miles between Georgian Bay and St. Joseph's Island (on the Ontario side of the international boundary with Michigan). The channel, mostly in Canada, is formed on the south by Drummond Island in Michigan and in Ontario by Cockburn Island and long, irregular Manitoulin Island.
In this part of the Eastern Upper Peninsula, the most striking views occur where close-to-the-surface limestone bedrock meets the waters of northern Lake Huron in a vast variety of forms: islands and channels, rocky points, offshore rocks, occasional bluffs, and sandy coves. The area's beauty is along the water, not just the Lake Huron shore but along the St. Marys River and on marshes by the water's edge and inland, too. "Forests of white cedar, balsam fir, white birch, and quaking aspen dominate the shores," states the web site of the Les Cheneaux Chamber of Commerce, in a description that fits the entire area. "Hardwood forests of sugar maple and beech favor the deeper soils inland. Wetlands range from marshes along Lake Huron with their neighboring sedge meadows, to bogs with tamarack and black spruce and white cedar swamps. White and red pine tower above sand ridges and old beaches near the lakes." Several small businesses use cedar for shingles, posts, and furniture. Tassier's Sugar Bush in Cedarville makes maple syrup on a commercial scale.
Such diversity of habitat adds up to a wonderful environment for birds. Wetlands and many species of trees provide many kinds of cover and some food. There's lots of food in the form of bugs and fish. Moreover, the Lake Huron shore and St. Marys River are parts of a major flyway from Canada to Central America. These factors "provides a constantly changing panorama for bird watchers," the Les Cheneaux Chamber of Commerce truthfully proclaims. It promotes birding as a low-impact form of recreation that brings visitors to resorts and motels in slower seasons of spring and fall.
A real attraction for birders is the spring warbler migration as seen on the south shores of both Drummond Island and the mainland south of M-13. Attention is now being paid to the St. Marys River as a flyway for migrating birds. The Petoskey-based Little Traverse Conservancy, active in the Eastern Upper Peninsula as well as the "tip of the mitt" below the bridge, has just received a $1 million grant from the North American Wetlands Conservation Council to purchase and protect five significant tracts on the St. Marys. The tracts "provide important feeding, nesting, and resting habitat for a multitude of bird species as well as other wildlife," according to the conservancy.
Les Cheneaux has taken the lead in nature tourism in Michigan. Development is inevitable, its civic leaders reason, but a focus on nature tourism can modify development to be more in synch with their area's nature-loving, low-key, unpretentious lifestyle. As the driving force behind EUPNTA, the Eastern Upper Peninsula Nature Tourism Association, Linda Hudson of Cedarville has gotten tourism people from Curtis and Newberry to Drummond Island together ? just that is a quite a trick ? talking the same language so that even a snowmobile dealer is working for his community to provide a better visitor experience by developing nature trails and in-town sidewalks. Jessie Hadley and Jim Patrick, both from southeast Michigan, operate Woods & Water Eco-Tours (mostly kayaking and mountain biking at Les Cheneaux and Drummond Island) according to the principles of eco-tourism: small-scale, low-impact, educational and appreciative in tone, benefiting the local economy, contributing to local nonprofits for environmental protection.
Fishing, of course, is the area's oldest touristic attraction. Noted outdoors writer Tom Huggler points out in 50 More Michigan Rivers that the St. Marys River is "one of the most diverse fisheries in North America. . . . [It is] home to more than 80 species of fish, at least 44 of which spawn in the system's four distinct fish habitat types: emergent wetlands, sand-gravel beaches, open waters and bays, and the St. Marys Rapids. Besides fish native to the system, the river hosts migrants---everything from smelt to sturgeon---from lakes Superior and Huron. This incredible body of water is home to world-class Atlantic salmon in the rapids [DeTour also touts its salmon fishing], outstanding herring and whitefish, and many other gamefish species, including some in the trophy class."
The St. Marys River is "the drain plug for Lake Superior," Huggler explains. It "carries a tremendous volume of water south for 68 miles to northern Lake Huron. . . . It ranks No. 8 among American rivers for rate of flow." However, the fishing isn't quite what it once was, Huggler adds, due to the impact of freighter traffic, Indian gill-net fishing, and cormorants eating too many perch, with devastating effects in the fisheries of Les Cheneaux.
Except for the outstandingly beautiful and relatively little traveled M-134 from DeTour to I-75 north of St. Ignace, the region's roads don't showcase most of the many low-key delights here---certainly not on Drummond Island or the St. Marys River. There you have to refer to a map to reach water access points and see anything. The land inland is flat to rolling---no mountains, no waterfalls. A lot of it is farmland. Its character is akin to Lower Peninsula areas like Presque Isle and Cheboygan counties around Rogers City, Posen, and Black Lake. Pickford, due north of Cedarville, is the area's agricultural center and the winter home of Mackinac Island's horses.
M-134 between Cedarville and DeTour is an exceptionally beautiful road without much traffic. Much of it wasn't paved until the 1960s. The road affords views of a series of rocky points and little bays, some with sandy beaches and low dunes, others with marshes full of wildlife. A good deal of land here is part of the Lake Superior State Forest, and M-134 seems part of a beautiful, magically under-used park. Frequent pulloffs make it easy to stop and watch birds, to swim, to beachcomb for the area's plentiful limestone fossils, or to walk into the low natural areas of birch, cedar, and hemlock. From Cedarville west to I-75, there's little real water access from M-134. Here the highway goes through a fair amount of marshland and forest in the Hiawatha National Forest.
Descriptions of natural areas along M-134 can be found under Hessel, Cedarville, and DeTour. Here they are listed in order from west (the Mackinac Bridge) east to Detour:
* Search Bay beach and St. Martin's Point hiking and ski trail (Hessel)
* Birge Nature Preserve, Point Brulee (Hessel)
* Mackinac Bay Scenic Overlook (Hessel)
* Prentiss Bay Marsh (Cedarville)
* Gerstacker Preserve (DeTour)
* Bailey Roadside Park (DeTour)
* DeTour State Forest Campground and St. Vital Point (DeTour)
Although there's no separate bicycle path, M-134 has extra-wide, two-foot paved shoulders that make for good bicycling. Summer residents are often seen walking along the shoulders enjoying the pristine scenery. Another plus for out-of-shape bicyclist: M-134 is quite flat. Mountain bikes would allow additional adventures, taking the often rough, unimproved roads south off M-134 out to the points, or on Drummond Island. For a delightful, lazy day, wear your swimsuit or shorts and good wading shoes. Bring binoculars for watching birds and boats.
The local culture in this area is a down-to-earth, pleasantly conservative blend of longtime summer people and local people largely descended from the area's farmers (typically German and Polish), sailors, and fishermen, and the occasional transplant drawn to the woods and water. Many have some French-Canadian and/or Native American heritage. One reservation of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians is just north of Hessel. Just about everyone here, no matter what theirbackground, shares a love of fishing, boating, and the outdoors. Maybe that's what makes it such a pleasant place.
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HELPFUL AREA INFORMATION
For Les Cheneaux, call the LES CHENEAUX CHAMBER of COMMERCE, (906) 484-3935, or stop by the LES CHENEAUX WELCOME CENTER on the north side of M-134 at Blindline Road 1/2 mile west of the blinker light in Cedarville. Look in on the area's outstanding website, www.lescheneaux.org for a wide variety of information on businessess, cultural institutions, nature, and more . . . For DeTour call DeTOUR CHAMBER of COMMERCE (906) 297-5987. The phone rings at North Country Sports on Ontario at Elizabeth in the center of town. It's open daily, year-round, from 9 to 5. It has some printed info for walk-ins. More printed info is at the DeTour Historical Museum by the ferry dock, open from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day daily from 1 to 5, opening Saturday at noon. Or visit www.detourvillage.com. . . . For Drummond Island, call the DRUMMOND ISLAND CHAMBER of COMMERCE, (800) 737-8666 or visit www.drummondisland.com North Haven Rentals & Gifts, on M-134 not far from the ferry, functions as an informal information center. (906) 493-5567. Open daily in season. . . Mike Lilliquist and his crew at the MICHIGAN WELCOME CENTER in St. Ignace by the Mackinac Bridge exit are a font of helpful information and background beyond hundreds of free pamphlets and (often) free phone books of U.P. areas. (906) 643-6979. Open daily, year-round, 9-5, in summer from 8 to 6. P.S.: the center can be reached from the U.P. side of the bridge.
PUBLIC LAND
The Lake Superior State Forest administers a great deal of state land along Great Lakes waterways near DeTour, on Drummond Island, and along the St. Marys River. Contact the DNR's Sault Ste. Marie office, open weekdays from 8 to 4:30, except closed for lunch from noon to 1. It's at 2001 Ashmun. (906) 635-6161. . . . Government Island and St. Martin's Point in Les Cheneaux are part of the HIAWATHA NATIONAL FOREST, (906) 643-7900. Its complete range of handouts is stocked at the Michigan Welcome Center by the Mackinac Bridge exit in St. Ignace. The National Forest's St. Ignace administrative office, an attraction in its own right, is on the north side of U.S. 2 six miles west of the bridge. It's open weekdays 8-4:30. . . . LAND CONSERVANCIES also have a growing number of properties in the Eastern U.P. open to the public, sometimes for hunting. On the web site of The Nature Conservancy, www.nature.org, go to "Where we work" and find "Michigan" under "U.S." For the Little Traverse Conservancy, go to www.landtrust.org and look under "Nature Preserves."
GUIDES AND CHARTERS
In Les Cheneaux, Jim Shutt's Dreamseeker Charter & Tours and Norman Perkins Les Cheneaux Island tours are Great Lakes fishing charters and scenic cruises. Jim Patrick gives guided kayak tours as North Huron Kayak Company (484-3466). . . . The local outdoors store in DeTour is North Country Sports (906-297-5165) downtown. . . . Drummond Island Yacht Haven (906-493-5232) is a good source of fishing guide referrals. Botanist Ellen Weatherbee (734-878-9178; e-mail eew@umich.edu) does half-day trips through The Nature Conservancy and a Drummond spring weekend. (Expect intense botany, not loosely appreciative nature observations.). . . Capt. Jack Behrens out of DeTour conducts custom cruises for up to six people on Drummond's north shore and along the St. Marys River (including Lime Island). Call (800) 206-8079 or visit www.michcharterboats.com/island queen.
EVENTS
Consult www.lescheneaux.org for details. The area's big event is the Wooden Boat Show is on the second Saturday of August in Hessel. Les Cheneaux school children provided the impetus for the mid May Frog Festival. North of Cedarville, Creekside Herbs (www.creekside-herbs.com/contents.html) offers a full schedule of interesting workshops and some day-long free special events featuring children and artists. Les Cheneaux Historical Museum holds occasional evening programs. Two summer theater productions of the Les Cheneaux Education Foundation pack in crowds at the high school in Cedarville.
HARBORS with transient dockage: In Hessel the Clark Twp. Marina (906-484-3917; off-season 484-2672; lat. 46° 00' 05" N, long. 84° 25' 30" W) with showers, launch ramp, laundry. In DeTour (906-297-5947; off-season 906-643-8620) with showers.
PICNIC PROVISIONS and PLACES
* Cedarville has the area's only supermarket, Cedarville Foods, on M-134 at M-129. Its deli section is better than it used to be. Pammi's Restaurant and Cheryl's Place (see restaurants) do a big take-out business; so does Ang-Gio's for pizza. The prime picnic spots are the picnic tables at the marinas in downtown CEDARVILLE and HESSEL.
* Serene picnic areas with beach, woods, and dunes close at hand are along M-134 between Cedarville and DeTour. 18 miles east of Cedarville there's a beautiful Michigan Department of Transportation roadside park. Four miles beyond that is the DeTour Picnic Area on state land.
* In DeTOUR itself there are benches and a gazebo in the Dr. Shula Giddens Memorial Garden, overlooking the DeTour passage and its occasional freighter traffic. DeTour's grocery, Sune's, is on Ontario Street, the main drag that parallels the waterfront.
* DRUMMOND ISLAND lends itself to outings on or near the water with a good sack lunch. A formal picnic area in the heart of Drummond Village (north on Bailey Road) is the Betsy Seaman Park, right on the water with a playground. The island has a grocery, Sune's, right on the four corners. A short ways beyond it on Johnswood, in part of a house, is a very good all-around gourmet deli and wine shop, Gourmet Gallery (493-5507).
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