Mackinac Island Ski Getaway

There's nothing like skiing down Mackinac Island's main drag in the sunshine, then cozying up for an island late winter night.

Mar 4, 2008 Lynda Twardowski

Todd Zawistowski

(page 1 of 2)

Inside my mini manor at Sunset Condos I find exactly what I've come to expect from Mackinac Island: a sweet escape swathed in floral wallpaper and cotton-candy pink paint, a breath-taking bedroom window view - I can see the Mighty Mac stretching across the Straits - and, on the fireplace mantel, a framed glossy of Jane Seymour, costar of Somewhere in Time, the cult romance classic filmed on the island in 1980.

But outside my door is Mackinac like I've never seen it before. It's tucked under a frothy blanket of snow and hushed as a still life. I clip into my skinny skis, slide off the porch and swoosh into the sugar. Save for the prints of horse hooves I cross at the property's gate, the island appears empty of anyone but me.

A cross-country skier couldn't ask for a better setting than Mackinac in winter. There are no cars. Few tourists. The sky is blue more often than gray, thanks to Straits winds that make it hard for clouds to hang on above the tiny island. And until the surrounding waters freeze over, the number of snowmobiles buzzing around is limited to the handful of year-round island residents.

Although 80 percent of the 4.4-square-mile island is undeveloped and as wild as it was when President Andrew Johnson named it America's second national park in 1875, I can't resist cruising to a spot that's been a showcase of civilization for the last century: the Grand Hotel. I approach from the west, first dipping into Hubbard's Annex to gape in awe at the cluster of buttoned-up summer cottages the size of castles, then veer over to West Bluff Road. It's a steep chute of a throughway, stretched along the top of a cliff that, to my right, falls away to a ribbon of road and shoreline, and to my left is fringed with gingerbread cottages so dolled up with trim and confectionery pastels they resemble a row of wedding cakes. I shove off, sail down and spill out at the base of the Grand.

The rows of rocking chairs and red geraniums that line the self-proclaimed world's longest porch are gone, but the porch ceiling persists in its milky Mackinac Island blue. The hue is chosen because it simulates the summer sky - key to keeping predator-fearing barn swallows from nesting.

Halfway down the sloped road out front, I make a quick detour into the woods where the hotel's greenhouses hide, emerging at the Grand's immense front yard. The usually green grounds, named one of the nation's "Top Ten Lawns with a View" in 2003, now sparkle pure white. Irresistible. I zigzag tracks on its untouched tundra until I hear the lunchtime signal: the firehouse's daily noon siren - and the cacophony of island dogs that howl along.

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