Letters Home: A Memoir of Michigan's "Up North" Country

By Tom Leonard

A memoir of a long-distance bicycle trip Leonard and his best friend undertook in July and August of 1965, when they were fifteen years old, riding and camping from Lansing, Michigan, through the northern Lower Peninsula and into the Upper Peninsula to Marquette, then Menominee, then across Lake Michigan by ferry to Frankfort, Michigan, and back home.

Eight hundred ground miles were covered by bicycle alone, and more than a hundred additional miles by ship. The author describes in considerable detail the friends' adventures and misadventures, routes and detours, geographical and historic features, some local history, and the people who offered them help and encouragement along the way.

Telling his story in a sympathetic, often comical style, the author recalls the physical rigors and hardships endured, the sacrifices made, the mechanical failures and other obstacles overcome. He describes camps made in state park campgrounds and back yards, rooms in seedy hotels, and an overnight stay in one of the world's most spectacular and prestigious resort hotels, the renowned Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island—a national historic landmark. He documents a stormy nighttime crossing of Lake Michigan on the Arthur K. Atkinson, a car-train ferry ship serving the historic Ann Arbor Railroad line—all consigned now to the realm of memory.

The memoir recounts how the boys' companionship is ultimately shattered by a heartbreaking mechanical breakdown, and how the author was forced to complete the final 150-mile homeward journey alone. In a bittersweet epilogue, the author speculates how and whether such an adventure would succeed if it were to happen today. He lays much of the credit for its success at the door of the helpful strangers who befriended them. Finally, he reflects on the meaning of the experience (and the friendship) within the context of his life, from the vantage point of almost sixty years' time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350953589

Tom Leonard

Tom Leonard is a lifelong resident of the upper Great Lakes basin. After graduating from Michigan State University, he became a social worker specializing in services to the mentally ill. Changing careers in midlife, he emerged as one of Michigan's leading advocates for environmental causes. He lobbied for public policy improvements in air, land, and water use. He defended wildlife habitat and was an early proponent of climate protections and sustainable business practices. Now he is a memoirist and writer of fiction. His work examines the American mythos. Legally blind, he writes with the help of assistive technology. He lives with his wife Susan and their two cats, Ursula and Theodore.

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Letters Home

A Memoir of Michigan’s Up North Country

© 2024, Thomas Leonard

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35095-357-2

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35095-358-9

Contents

Prologue

To Mount Pleasant

To Grayling

To Indian River

To Mackinac Island

To Mackinaw City (Again)

To Little Shag Lake

To Escanaba

To Menominee

Lake Michigan Crossing

To Mesick

In Cadillac

To Maple Rapids

Epilogue

Prologue

In the summer of 1964, when I was fourteen, I rode a bicycle from my home in Wacousta, Michigan, to my family’s cottage at Gun Lake, Barry County, in the company of my best friend, Mike B—. We covered the one-way distance of about sixty miles in about eight hours, pedaling through rural Eaton and Barry County farmlands, small towns, and forested recreation and game areas. To a fourteen-year-old living in that time, it seemed a very substantial feat. I knew no one of any age who had tackled such a long day’s bicycle ride. Mike and I camped out for two nights on the eastern end of Murphy’s Island, an island accessible only by boat. It was then, as it still is today, part of Gun Lake State Park. It was, and remains, an undeveloped island, thick with natural vegetation. We used my father’s home-built sailboat to get there and had the little island entirely to ourselves.

Camping is forbidden on Murphy’s Island now, but no such rule existed in the early 1960s. No one objected to our being there and pitching our tent there. No one came by to object to the campfires we built to cook our meals.

Today, the state posts a sign on the island’s gravelly beach, warning away would-be campers.

After two or three days spent relaxing in camp and sailing around the lake in my father’s boat, we broke camp and left Murphy’s Island. We returned to our bikes, reversed course, and bicycled back to our Lansing-area homes. Our total mileage, by bicycle alone, amounted to about 120 to 130 miles. Sixty years later, it’s still a nice memory.

I don’t recall which of us, Mike or I, was the first to think of making this little trip. I think it was a mutual concept. I had known Mike for as long as we had been in school together at Holy Cross School in Lansing—which is to say, since the first grade, and even before that. I remembered him, in fact, even from our kindergarten days. We didn’t become friends until we joined the scouting program at Holy Cross and became members of Troop 36, Chief Okemos Council, Boy Scouts of America, under the sponsorship of the parish of Holy Cross. I was ten years old at that time; Mike was eleven. Troop 36 fostered our comradeship, and over the next few years we became fast friends—so much so that when our high school years began and Mike entered a Franciscan seminary in southern Indiana, while I continued attending the Catholic schools in Lansing, we stayed in close touch. We exchanged long handwritten letters. I subscribed to his school’s monthly magazine to keep up with his life and doings, and we never failed to get together during his vacation visits home.

During the 1964–65 school year, with the long summer holiday impending, Mike put forward an idea that inspired me with its audacious scale: his idea was that we should undertake a much longer, far more challenging bicycle adventure. It was no idle fantasy; he already had a plan and had begun to prepare.

He proposed this in a letter to me from Mount St. Francis: a journey of roughly 800 miles, round trip, from Lansing northward, across the Mackinaw straits, into the heart of Michigan’s storied Upper Peninsula (known to all Michigan citizens simply as the U.P.), and then home again. We would travel by bicycle, as we had the previous year, carrying our gear with us, relying on ourselves and each other, from Lansing nearly to Marquette, Michigan—virtually at the other end of the state.

Our destination is a cottage on the north shore of Little Shag Lake, near Gwynn, in Marquette County, about 20 miles south of the city of Marquette, he wrote in one of his letters. This cottage, he said, belonged to friends of his family, but for a little span of time, it would be ours to use. Mike told me the owners’ name, which I promptly forgot and can’t remember to this day. Even to me, it sounded like an adolescent pipe dream. He assured me it was not. In fact, the offer of the cottage had already been extended and provisionally accepted. His parents were aware and had actually brokered the deal, so to speak. It would be available to us if we wanted it—and could get ourselves there. There would be no charge to us. It was a gift. Mike described a rustic, lakefront frame house, heated only with wood, and without running water—only a shallow well with a hand pump. It would be a private, picturesque location on a small U.P. lake. The total 800-mile distance from home to Marquette County and then back again did not include miles traveled over water. Mike envisioned a Lake Michigan ferry crossing on the return trip, and potentially, a stop at Mackinac Island on the trip out.

Bicycles were not allowed on the Mackinac Bridge. To get to the U.P., we would have to cross the straits by passenger ferry, first from Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island, and then from Mackinac Island to St. Ignace.

I could hardly believe that such an opportunity had been afforded us. However, I adapted quickly to the bold scale of the concept. I don’t recall that I had any serious trouble getting on board with this idea myself, but I must have understood that my parents would have to be convinced that it was not a completely harebrained scheme concocted by idiot teenage boys. I knew I would need their permission, obviously, but also their advice and support. I had no hope of beginning such a trip, much less completing it, if they were opposed to it.

It still surprises me even today that they ever agreed to let me go. It is hard to imagine a similar journey being undertaken today by similarly immature, inexperienced boys, and seeing it succeed. I must already have crossed some threshold of trust for such a lunatic idea to be considered seriously and not rejected out of hand. In any case, for the moment my parents’ attitude was one of wait and see. If I wanted to go, I would have to raise the necessary money to do it, and I would need a bicycle fit for the rigors of the trip.

Mike was now far from home, attending school at the Mount, tucked among forested hills somewhere across the Ohio River from Louisville, in the area of New Albany, Indiana. Except for vacations and holidays, when we spent as much time together as we could spare, our contact was limited to the exchange of letters. Soon we were embroiled in bike-travel business. We began to assemble a small mountain of detail. We looked at routes and destinations. We talked about new bicycles and derailleurs and inner tube repair kits, water bottles, tire pumps, and camping gear—and how to carry it all.

People travel by bicycle in great numbers now—often covering long distances. Bike travel has evolved and become less remarkable. But I find that our small accomplishment, undertaken while we were mere boys, still impresses people today. In the process of planning and carrying out this trip, we learned many valuable lessons—not just about the logistics of bike travel but about life, friendship, our home state, and our own capabilities.

At some point, one of us had the idea to spend a night in Mackinac Island’s world-renowned Grand Hotel. Grand Hotel bills itself as the largest summer resort hotel in the world, and I have no reason to doubt it. It has been a state and national landmark since its construction in 1887. It was, and is today, a Victorian summertime fantasy of the good life, where refined people dress for dinner and move about the island by horse and carriage.

I was the one selected to research the practicality of making ourselves guests of Grand Hotel. I wrote to the hotel and was provided, by return mail, with a packet of information. There was a range of rooms, views, and prices. An affordable option, for two guests over one night, would cost us approximately ten or fifteen times as much as any other hotel we might select. But under the hotel’s American Plan, meals would be included in the price.

After consulting with Mike, I sent Grand Hotel a twenty-dollar deposit and booked a room with two twin beds and a view out the back: the less fashionable side. No one asked me how old we were.

At the beginning of summer I sold my old bicycle, an ancient two-speed Raleigh, and bought a new one—also an import, with a five-speed Campagnolo derailleur. Its frame was the color of brass, and it had chrome fenders. I confess, I don’t remember what brand it was. It was no brand I was familiar with. I gathered the money from many sources over many months. In addition to the proceeds from the sale of my old bike, I earned money doing chores around the house, and I salted away cash gifts from my relatives. Much of it was Christmas money.

Once I had selected my new bike, I spent a lot of time getting to know it and putting it through its paces, as the saying goes. I rode it on rural roads