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Along Michigan's Pictured Rocks, there's no such thing as a bad view.
White sandstone cliffs line nearly 40 miles of national lakeshore, the nation's first when it was created in 1966. Named for the colorful swishes and whorls painted by mineral-laden water oozing through cracks, Pictured Rocks draws tourists from around the world.
This part of Michigan is inconveniently distant for tourists from big cities; Detroit is closer to Charleston, W.V., than Munising. But it may be just distant enough. Munising, 45 minutes east of Marquette, is an unremarkable town, but it sits in a remarkable setting that would be mobbed if it were any closer.
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.
In Sault Ste. Marie, tourists find out what floats their boats.
For most, it’s watching serious machinery moving through the Soo Locks. What really floats a boat, however, is 22 million gallons of water, which is what it takes to lift a boat through the Poe Lock, a liquid escalator between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
It’s a June evening at the Soo Locks, and the Earl W. Oglebay is coming from Silver Bay with a load of taconite. A camera aimed toward Lake Superior catches the 630-foot boat in the distance and projects it onto a TV monitor in the Visitors Center, where boat-watchers have started to gather.
We'd been in La Crosse for barely an hour, and everyone we'd met was a certified character.
In Riverside Park, Frank and Faith Rimmert and Jonathan and Barb Rimmert were decked out in top hats, waistcoats and crinolines to meet the Mississippi Queen paddlewheeler, portraying the 19th-century locals who would have assembled.
"If your relatives were coming for a visit, you'd come to greet them," said Faith Rimmert, a volunteer for the La Crosse County Historical Society. "People picked up things being shipped in, or maybe you'd be looking for a servant — you'd say, 'I want that person for a servant in my house.'"