Book Description

For those who are looking to get-away-from-it-all camping & hiking summer vacation on four uninhabited Lake Michigan Islands, this book describes a delightful mixture of hikes along secluded beaches, through semi-wilderness forest, & sites of abandoned farms & ghost towns. North Manitou & South Manitou are part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore while High & Garden Islands are administered by Michigan's Department of Natural Resources. Histories of the islands are included. Three of the four islands once had small towns & were farmed by nineteenth-century German & Scandanavian immigrants. One was the site of an early twentieth-century communal religious colony where the sexes lived separately. Another is rich in Indian lore with over 2,000 Indians buried there. Today, except for a few historic buildings & ranger residences, the islands are rapidly returning to wilderness.Included are detailed trail maps for each island & 230 photographs divided between historical prints & contemporary pictures. Trail information includes trail length, hiking time, points of interest along or near the trails. Also included are suggestions on what to bring, the best times to visit, how to get to each island & suggested hiking itineraries.