Monday 12 May 2025--Today I walk up by Mackinac's really grand hotel, which oddly enough is called the Grand Hotel. It is itself one of the island's most popular tourist attractions. If you want to sit on the 660-foot-long front porch and admire the view to the Mackinac Bridge, you will have to book a time and observe the dress code (and pay a fee, if you are not a hotel guest). The 393 rooms go for $1000 a night and up in high season.

I walk out along the bluff to the west, where there is a large neighborhood of upscale summer homes. It's a warm day, and I'm hoping for some relief as I turn up into the woods, but there isn't any foliage on the trees yet. I come to a much more modest neighborhood in the interior, where apparently a lot of the seasonal service personnel get housed--I see several making their way down to town, or back up. Most of them seem to be Jamaican or Barbadian or some such.

My walk today is three miles or so, about the same as yesterday. As happens so often these days in my travels, I find myself wishing I'd come here ten or fifteen years ago, when I'd have been able to see so much more of what's here.