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Many people turn lighthouses into a hobby. In summer, they travel from beacon to beacon, photographing them and collecting stamps in their U.S. Lighthouse Society passports until they've got 60 and can move onto the next passport and, eventually, the "Platinum Circle'' patch awarded after 240 lighthouse visits.
It's not easy to get to every lighthouse, however. Many are on islands or inaccessible by car, so aficionados are quick to sign up for the special boat trips offered during lighthouse festivals.
Below are some of the cruises that will take visitors to lights in the western Great Lakes in 2008. On many, places go
quickly.
Around the Great Lakes, love for lighthouses is unlimited. Often called "America's castles,'' lighthouses are symbols of a more adventurous era, and tourists find them irresistible.
"They work their way up the coast seeing all the lighthouses,'' says Ronda Werner of Michigan's Tawas Point Light. "They bring their lighthouse book and want stamps in their passports, and they're all decked out in their lighthouse shirts and their little lighthouse earrings. It's wonderful so many people have this much passion for our lighthouses.''
Now, the state parks and friends associations who care for them have found a way to harness all this passion: They're turning tourists into volunteer keepers. This spring, the 1869 Tawas Point Light on Michigan's Lake Huron coast is taking applications for its first keepers on a sandy spit often called "the Cape Cod of the Midwest.''
Along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, everyone waits for a big freeze.
Only when temperatures stay low for a long time will the edges of Lake Superior freeze enough for people to walk out to the mainland ice caves, whose beauty is renowned. Even when ice is sufficiently solid — and it was only once in the last three winters — wind may suddenly split it, and snow may block the access drive. So when park rangers say it’s okay to go — well, then you’d better go.
Borrowing a pair of snowshoes from the innkeeper at the Fo’c’sle B&B in Cornucopia, I drove four miles east to Meyers Road, parked near the lakeshore and started picking my way over the lumpy path. The whole world was white, except for the frosty blue of the sky, and it was hard to tell where lake ended and shore began — especially since a 4-foot-high wall of snowy boulders sat where I thought lake should be. Then I passed Craig Mealman of nearby Russell Township, who explained that the “boulders’’ were blocks of ice pushed toward the shore by wind.
The sky was clear, the wind was still and Lake Superior was as placid as a lily pond.
It was a miracle that wouldn't last. That's why it was torture for the dozen of us to sit through a long kayak safety course on the sandy beach of Bayfield, Wis., forming a ''human knot'' to foster cooperation in case of disaster and listening to trip leader Hovas Schall's horror stories about the big, mercurial lake.
''Kayakers play a game with the weather, and the weather always wins,'' she said darkly. "Sea kayaking is a dangerous sport.''
On a summer day on Chequamegon Bay, there are few sights more enchanting than the sailboats bobbing around Bayfield.
With the Blessing of the Fleet in June, the tourist season kicks into high gear. Ferries chug nonstop between Bayfield and Madeline Island. Excursion boats head for the other Apostles. Sailboat captains take out novices and teach them how to hoist a jib.
Once, these waters were full of cargo boats, ferrying brownstone and lumber and herring to cities in the East. Bayfield hummed with industry, and town fathers hoped it would become another Chicago.
A century ago, in the Apostle Islands, only seven puny shafts of light stood between sailors and catastrophe.
Lake Superior has been called the most dangerous body of water in the world, an inland teakettle in which any tempest can be deadly. Storms gather fury over 200 miles of open water, and heaven help mariners caught between wind and rock — heaven, or a lighthouse keeper with sharp eyes.
During a ferocious storm in September 1905, Outer Island lighthouse keeper John Irvine saw a lifeboat leave the foundering schooner Pretoria and then capsize offshore; five men drowned, but the 60-year-old keeper was able to pull the remaining five ashore.
Over the centuries, waves of history have buffeted Madeline Island and given it as many variations as a Lake Superior agate.
This wooded island off Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula, the largest of the 22 Apostle Islands, exerts a magnetic pull.
The Ojibwe came from the east, led to "food that grows on water'' — wild rice — by a cowrie shell in the sky, according to their origin mythology,
In Bayfield, Wis., the apple has mushroomed.
In 1961, the apple was the object of a small village festival. Today, it draws 60,000 people to a fall blowout featuring all things apple — fritters, sundaes, dumplings, pies and apple-cheeked children.
On northern Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula, Apple Festival is nearly as revered as motherhood.
It's funny how a simple stretch of frozen water can trigger so much anticipation.
The Bayfield Peninsula, on the northern tip of Wisconsin, is in summer a playground of sand, water and woods, beloved by tourists.
In winter, the playground expands.