There are plenty of glorious views of Les Cheneaux Islands from land, but the best way to get a good look at the 36-island archipelago in the extreme eastern portion of Michigan's Upper Peninsula is on the water.
We stayed at Dancing Waters, a small bed-and-breakfast on the tip of an island offering a 270-degree view of the chain of islands.
That view was pretty glorious in and of itself, but we didn't have kayaks and the inn's pontoon boat was in for repairs.
Here was where the true value of staying at a B&B run by locals came into play, as our host recruited one of his friends with a sailboat to take us out for a couple of hours to tour the islands from the water!
Boating at Les Cheneaux has a pretty long history, dating back at least 400 years when Native Americans used dugout and birch bark canoes to get around the area, and French and British explorers did the same in canoes and a larger type of open wooden sailboat called a Mackinaw boat.
The towns of Cedarville and Hessel developed along the shore near Les Cheneaux Islands as the area began drawing hunters, fishers and other tourists who stayed at island resorts and hotels that began opening even as the two towns were still only accessible via water when a ferry brought tourists to the area during the pre-Mackinac Bridge days
People could drive into the area once M-134 started to develop in the Upper Peninsula by 1939, although the road wouldn't go all the way through to Drummond Island until the late 1980s.
Still, boating is extremely popular in this area with plentiful natural harbors and sheltered channels during the summer.
There is a major Antique Wooden Boat Show at Hessel in August, a renowned boat building school and many competitive sailing regattas during the summer. We were here too early in the year for a lot of these activities and limited early-season hours meant we didn't catch Les Cheneaux Historical and Maritime Museums open during our early-June stay in Cedarville.
Still, we had a beautiful sunny day for our sailing adventure and a day free of crowds of other sailors.
Our sailboat captain even allowed Tim to steer for a few minutes!
The water was clear enough that we could see the remains of several shipwrecks as we slowly sailed through some of the shallowest portions of the channels.
We also saw a lone block house sitting on one of the larger islands. I failed to find much information about this curiosity.
One touring site says the block house dates from the late 1800s, although I think it dates from considerably later or was extensively reworked in more recent years. I found an image of a considerably more battered version of this structure with a chimney that the photographer says sits on Long Island and a conversation on a boating forum that mentions the replacement of an older version of the block house in late 2008.
The trip was over all too soon, and we headed back into the marina at Hessel.
Definitely a day to remember.
Want to learn more about Les Cheneaux Islands and the area's history? Check out Hessel, Cedarville and the Les Cheneaux Islands by Deborah I. Gouin, The Les Cheneaux Chronicles: Anatomy of a Community by Phillip McM Pittman, or A Brief History of les Cheneaux Islands, Some New Chapters, of Mackinac History by Frank R. Grover.
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved
OH!!! I love this! What fun - and sailing is such an amazing time, much better than the pontoon boat.
Posted by: wanderingeducators | June 24, 2014 at 07:44 AM
I think you're right about sailing being more fun than a pontoon boat here! Tim's family used to have a small sail boat when he was a kid, so he especially enjoyed the opportunity to sail because it had been so many years since he'd last had a chance to do so!
Posted by: Dominique King | June 24, 2014 at 08:21 AM