Somewhere in Time (How to Really Time Travel)
Jonathan and I set out to save $10 – $5 apiece – on the ferry ride to Mackinac Island last week. Oh, but we also time travelled. We boarded the same ferry that Jonathan’s mother chose 40 years ago.
As I mentioned here, Jonathan’s parents lived in Northern Michigan (in Saint Ignace) in the early 1970’s. Jonathan’s dad Dennis worked at the St. Ignace radio station. My mother-in-law, Fran, substitute taught at several places including the Mackinac Island Public School. Now, Fran was and is a little bit nervous about water and riding on boats. The smaller the boat, the more nervous she gets. Therefore, when she travelled to the island, she specifically chose the ferry line that had the largest boats. In the 1970’s, this was the Arnold Line. Fran often boarded a ferry named the Huron, taught on the island all day, and then came home safely to St. Ignace.
Now, there are three ferry lines that service Mackinac Island – Arnold, Star, and Shepler. Jonathan’s family visited Mackinac Island for day trips from time to time for the past 20 years or so. They chose the Arnold Line because Fran trusted Arnold with her safety in the 1970’s. At some point, Arnold purchased fancy new catamarans to take the place of their traditional ferry boats. When I started coming here, I saw all of the billboards that advertised Arnold as having the fastest boats to the island.
Fran still checks the “St. Ignace News” online, which is how we learned that Arnold has had some financial and legal complications in the past few years. You can read all about it in the archive section of the newspaper’s website. It affected Jonathan and me last summer when we showed up at the Arnold dock and found: 1.) The Arnold ferry schedule wasn’t as convenient as it used to be, 2.) The fancy new catamarans sat on a dry dock, and 3.) The old traditional passenger boats were back in service.
We have no complaints about last year’s (or this year’s) actual ferry trip. Yes, the schedule is less convenient and the trip time increased, but the ticket price also decreased. This year, we did note that the billboards advertising Arnold’s fast catamarans were covered over with new signs touting a “classic” cruise. Our tickets, the Arnold website, and an ad that I saw in a travel guide advise us to “Relax . . . You’re on Island time.” Well, of course they would say that. The wait time between ferries is now two hours!
Jonathan and I almost chose a different ferry line for this year’s trip to the island. We stuck with Arnold when we realized that the Arnold tickets were $5 less than the competitor’s. We went to board the old passenger boat – the Huron. The same boat that Fran rode to her teaching gig in the 1970’s. The big solid ferry that Fran chose to conquer her fear of water. We enjoyed a classic cruise. We travelled back in time – on our way to the island famous for the movie “Somewhere in Time.”
Postscript:
For the record, we unintentionally picked a windy day to travel to Mackinac Island last week. We estimated the waves that we saw on Lake Huron to be around 4 feet. We felt that we had relatively smooth trips both to and from Mackinac Island, even though we stood on our entire trip back. We were pleased with the entire crew of the Huron. We even overheard a skipper from a sailboat in the marina thank our captain for changing course so that he didn’t have to.
At the end of our day on Mackinac Island, a woman approached us with a clipboard. She asked us to complete a marketing survey about the three ferry lines in exchange for a voucher for a quarter pound of Mackinac Island fudge – at our favorite fudge vendor. I would never turn down free sweets, so of course I took the survey! However, the survey didn’t really give me a chance to explain the 40 year history that Jonathan’s family has with the Arnold ferry line, hence this blog entry.
Here are my previous blog entries about Northern Michigan:
7 Quirky Tips for Mackinac Island
5 Ways That Mackinac Island Reminds Me of Home
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