I'm On a Boat! The Mackinaw Island Ferry

This past summer when we made the trip up to the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan between the upper and lower peninsula, @mrsbozz and I kicked around the idea of visiting Mackinaw Island. Since we were so close at Straits State Park, it almost seemed like a given that we had to go. I'll cover more about the island itself tomorrow, but first, we needed to get over to the island.

Thankfully, there are plenty of options between the cities of St. Ignace and Mackinaw city to get you over to Mackinaw Island. Since we were just across the bridge in St. Ignace, it made the most sense for us to leave from there.

We made the short drive through the downtown St. Ignace area that snakes along the shore of Lake Huron. It's actually a pretty cool area that is very walkable and it has a ton of great restaurant and gift shops that you can visit. They even have a small sled dog outfitting shop sitting among the other more touristy places.

As I said, there were plenty of options for us to get over to the island, but I made the executive decision to take the Shepler's Ferry Company over to Mackinaw Island. If I'm being honest, I think I heard a while ago that many of the smaller companies got bought up and really there are just one or two main organizations that own all of the ferries now. I could be wrong though.

Apparently, I didn't get single photo of the ferry that we rode over to the island on. I must have been too busy making sure I wasn't holding up the line.

The ferry ride over to the island takes about 16 to 26 minutes depending on what company you use and which ferry they put you on. There are also some ferry tours that take you underneath the Mackinac Bridge as you saw in the opening photo. Those take a little longer because they have to go out of their way before going to the island.

The cost for three adults to ride the ferry was $30 a piece and then our nephew and his friend were something like $15 to $24 a piece. That means for about $140 the three of us got round trip transportation over to the island.

The ferries run pretty much every half hour, so you don't have a set departure time. You just wait in line and it's first come first serve to get on the ferry. Shepler's runs their ferry service from 7:30 AM to 10 PM depending on the day of the week and the time of year.

While some of the ferries use traditional diesel powered engines, there are some companies that offer hydro-jet service. If you look really closely in the photos above, you can see one of them. It's from the Star Line Ferry company and I think they can get you to the island on the shorter side of that 16 to 26 minute window no matter what city they leave from.

I noticed online that Shepler's has taken over all operations from Starline through the remainder of this season as they work to upgrade their fleet.

I actually didn't realize we were on one of the ferries that takes you under the Mackinac Bridge until the boat started going right instead of left out of the harbor. It turned out to be a really great experience for the kids.

Although I have been to the island several times in my life, this is the first time I can ever remember traveling under the bridge on the ferry. The captain of the boat had some really interesting facts to share with us. The one that stuck in my head the most was this:

The winds in the straits of Mackinaw can sometimes reach speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. When they built the Mackinac Bridge, they constructed it so it could withstand speeds of up to 600 miles per hour! Talk about going above and beyond!

Usually when the winds get too bad they either shut down the bridge or you have to be escorted across by a slower moving emergency vehicle. I've seen videos of people flipping trailers on the bridge because the winds were so strong. It's not something I ever want to experience!

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It didn't take long and the boat was turned around, we were back under the bridge and making a beeline for the the island. As you can see from the photos, the weather was really pleasant on the day that we decided to go over, so we got super lucky.

It wasn't too hot and the water was relatively calm.

Before long we were skirting the island and getting ready to pull into the harbor. That big white building you see in the photos above along the shore is the famous Grand Hotel. I will talk a bit more about that in my post tomorrow.

Despite the touristy nature of the island, there is still something kind of quaint and magical about it. Again, i'll touch more on that tomorrow in my post. In the last photo above, you see another large white building on the hill. That's actually a fort that has been on that location since the war of 1812 or longer.

Just to the left of the fort you might see a small (it's only looks small from this distance) house on the hill with three dormers. You have to squint pretty hard to see the dormers. Just trust me. That's the summer home for the governor of the State of Michigan. Call it a fringe benefit of being elected to the highest office in the state...

We pulled into port around 10:30 AM and still had a day of adventure ahead of us. Check back tomorrow and next week for more about that...

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