South Manitou Island

The day started early with a 9:15 boat ferry departure aboard the Manitou Island Transit (Mishe-Mokwa) from Leland Harbor to the South Manitou Island, which resides in Lake Michigan and is part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (where we traveled to last year on our Traverse City trip).  By recommendation from our 50 Hikes in Michigan book (thanks to Jessica and Patrick!), we decided to stop at the Village Cheese Shanty (just around the corner from the ferry dock in Leland) for a sandwich (on some tasty pretzel rolls!) to bring along for a day of hiking.

The cruise out to South Manitou Island took approximately 50 minutes to the island crossing the historic Manitou Passage, "where modern freighter may still be seen as well as landmarks like Pyramid Point", and "the Crib" or the North Manitou Shoal Lighthouse, pictured below.  We were told that the lighthouse is now functioning automatically now, but back when it was built in the late 19th century, it was manned manually by a few brave soles that would spend a few nights at the lighthouse (talk about a lot of down time!).

Some information about South Manitou Island from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore web site:

South Manitou Island is part of an island chain that extends north to the Straits of Mackinac. The island consists of a ridge of tilted layers of limestone, buried under a blanket of glacial debris. Glaciers carved out the Lake Michigan basin. When the basin filled with water, the peaks of the ridge remained exposed as islands. During post-glacial times, winds blowing on the high, sandy bluffs on the west side of the island moved sand inland, forming perched dunes.

Here's a Google Earth map of South Manitou Island:

View Larger Map

We pulled into the island with an incredible view of another lighthouse situated on the island near the crescent-shaped docking area called the South Manitou Island Lighthouse.  Using the map below and our trusty hiking book, we decided to bypass the Weather Station hike altogether (but we're pretty sure we passed it along our shoreline trail back to the dock), the Shipwreck hike (which we also passed on our shoreline trail back to the dock), and the Giant Cedars or "Valley of the Giants" (which we're pretty sure we saw similar trees along the trail), opting for the Dunes trail all the way out 3.2 miles to the other side of the island.

We hiked for awhile through a shaded area of the island arriving on the other side to hike up the perched sand dunes!  Luckily, these dunes didn't extend as far as out as when we hiked the Sleeping Bear Dunes trail.

From atop the dunes, at approximately 1,014 feet, we could see the entire South Manitou Island, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Leland, the North Manitou Island, and quite a bit of the water in Lake Michigan.  Of course, we zig-zagged about 300 feet down to the shore at this point unable to avoid the calling of the isolated beach ahead of us.  We spent some time here before heading back to the dock area via the beach trail.

After about a half hour of walking along the shore, we passed the Francisco Morazon shipwreck and stopped to eat our sack lunches!  The ship apparently ran aground during a fierce snow storm in 1960. The captain, his pregnant wife, and the crew were all rescued by the Coast Guard. In 1903, the Walter L. Frost, a wooden steamer, ran aground in the exact same spot.  This is what remains.

Here's a map of the hiking trails along the island:

 

We ended the long day with a nice shower and dinner over in Omena next door to Leelanau Cellars at Knot Just a Bar!  Post-dinner, we hit the obligatory lighthouse (2nd of the day!), the Grand Traverse Lighthouse and found a quaint spot in Peterson Park (hooray!) to watch the sunset.

More pictures from the day in my photo day album and evening album.