Michigan/Ontario
The Best of Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island: A Trans-Border Discovery
Program No. 21920RJ
Embark on an adventure between two countries, discovering timeless traditions, natural wonders, historical landmarks and cultural heritage with friendly locals and experts.
Enroll with Confidence
We want your Road Scholar learning adventure to be something to look forward to—not worry about. Learn more
Protecting the Environment
We offset a portion of the emissions created by your travel. Learn more
Prefer to enroll or inquire by phone?
800-454-5768
Select your type of room
Price will update based on selection
Prices displayed below are based on per person,doubleoccupancy.
DATES
& starting prices
PRICES
May 29 - Jun 5, 2024
Starting at
2,599Jun 12 - Jun 19, 2024
Starting at
2,599Jun 19 - Jun 26, 2024
Starting at
2,599Jun 26 - Jul 3, 2024
Starting at
2,899Jul 24 - Jul 31, 2024
Starting at
2,799Jul 31 - Aug 7, 2024
Starting at
2,799Aug 7 - Aug 14, 2024
Starting at
2,799Aug 21 - Aug 28, 2024
Starting at
2,799Sep 4 - Sep 11, 2024
Starting at
2,899Sep 18 - Sep 25, 2024
Starting at
2,899Sep 25 - Oct 2, 2024
Starting at
2,799Oct 2 - Oct 9, 2024
Starting at
2,799DATES
& starting prices
PRICES
May 29 - Jun 5, 2024
Starting at
3,459Jun 12 - Jun 19, 2024
Starting at
3,459Jun 19 - Jun 26, 2024
Starting at
3,459Jun 26 - Jul 3, 2024
Starting at
3,799Jul 24 - Jul 31, 2024
Starting at
4,149Jul 31 - Aug 7, 2024
Starting at
4,149Aug 7 - Aug 14, 2024
Starting at
4,149Aug 21 - Aug 28, 2024
Starting at
4,149Sep 4 - Sep 11, 2024
Starting at
3,799Sep 18 - Sep 25, 2024
Starting at
3,799Sep 25 - Oct 2, 2024
Starting at
3,699Oct 2 - Oct 9, 2024
Starting at
3,6998 days
7 nights
18 meals
7B 6L 5D
1
Check-in, Orientation, Welcome Dinner
Traverse City, MI
2
Sleeping Bear Dunes,Village Commons,Mission Point Lighthouse
Traverse City, MI
3
Mushroom Houses, Fish Hatchery, Ermatinger Clearge Home
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
4
Bushplane Museum, Metis Interpretive Guided Canoe Experience
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
5
Sault Ste Marie Canal, St Mary's Rapids, Mackinac Island
Mackinac Island, MI
6
Horse-drawn Carriage, Grand Hotel Lunch, Free Time
Mackinac Island, MI
7
Morning Lecture, Fort Mackinac
Mackinac Island, MI
8
Ferry & Transfer to Traverse City Airport, Program Concludes
Traverse City, MI
At a Glance
Join us for a cross-border learning adventure that takes you from one of the oldest continuous settlements in North America to an island suspended in time. Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Canada, has been inhabited for thousands of years. Equally ancient Mackinac Island became popular as a vacation destination in the late 19th century. Accessible only by boat and plane, the island maintains its Victorian ambiance with a focus on simple pleasures and a ban on cars. Learn from experts about history, culture, people and achievements through the ages.
Activity Level
Keep the Pace
Walking up to two miles per day, including two nature trail walks. Transportation on Mackinac Island by horse-drawn carriage, walking.
Small Group
Love to learn and explore in a small-group setting? These adventures offer small, personal experiences with groups of 13 to 24 participants.
What You'll Learn
- Recall earlier eras as you explore Mackinac Island by horse-drawn carriage to study its architecture and history with lunch at the Grand Hotel.
- Travel to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to view the dunes above Lake Michigan and learn about the geology and ecology of the dune plateau area.
- Learn about the importance of the fur trade during a field trip to Ermatinger-Clergue National Historic Site.
Featured Expert
All trip experts
Candice Dunnigan
Candi Dunnigan is a longtime resident and equestrian on Mackinac Island. She resides at Easterly Cottage with her family, and an assorted menagerie of horses, dogs, and cats. She has been the weekly equine columnist for The Mackinac Island Town Crier for fifteen years, and served as the first president of the Mackinac Island Horsemen’s Association. A former fox hunter, she enjoys cross country and trail riding more than anything. As an international rider she has ridden in across Europe and in Costa Rica.
Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.
Sue Shoemaker
View biography
Sue Shoemaker, a native-born Michigander, lives on a farm in the “Thumb.” A gratifying teaching and counseling career in middle school inspired Sue to become a group leader in order to share her passion for learning and travel with others. Sue has led a variety of Road Scholar programs: study cruises on the Great Lakes and the Columbia River, as well as land-based programs in Chicago, Detroit, Albuquerque (Balloon Fiesta), and northern Michigan.
Lynde Vespoli
View biography
Lynde Vespoli has been leading groups since 2006 and has worked for Road Scholar since 2012. She has certificates in travel and tourism, as well as hospitality and tourism management. A native Midwesterner, she has led programs in that region as well as Washington, D.C., New York, Canada, Cuba, and Italy. In her free time, Lynde enjoys traveling with her family and spoiling her granddaughters.
Candice Dunnigan
View biography
Candi Dunnigan is a longtime resident and equestrian on Mackinac Island. She resides at Easterly Cottage with her family, and an assorted menagerie of horses, dogs, and cats. She has been the weekly equine columnist for The Mackinac Island Town Crier for fifteen years, and served as the first president of the Mackinac Island Horsemen’s Association. A former fox hunter, she enjoys cross country and trail riding more than anything. As an international rider she has ridden in across Europe and in Costa Rica.
Micki Sigmon
View biography
Michele “Micki” Sigmon began her career in education, teaching outdoor education and recreation for 12 years. When an opportunity to work as a travel director fell into her lap, she knew she had found her calling. Micki has been working in the travel industry for about 20 years. She has owned her own travel company, worked on domestic river cruises and steamboats, and led groups throughout Chicago and the Great Lakes region. Micki looks forward to sharing her knowledge and love of learning.
Chip Reeves
View biography
Chip Reeves is a Michigander who is excited to share his local expertise. During the pandemic, Chip helped lead a business-focused university as vice president of finance and administration. He was formerly a marketing director with three decades of experience in innovation and international strategy. He is a lifelong student of language and culture that grew from his high school exchange student experience in Japan. He is a guest lecturer and professional facilitator for business and cross-cultural topics.
Kim Johnson
View biography
Kim Johnson is a lifelong Michigander. A graduate of Michigan State University, she spent over 30 years as a commercial banker. By happenstance, she discovered group leading which allowed her to retire early. This career change perfectly coincided with her grown sons venturing out on their own career paths. Today, Kim and her husband Greg are both enjoying life as group leaders with both students and adults. Her hobbies include hiking, reading, cycling, pet-sitting, and researching new places to visit.
Greg Johnson
View biography
Greg Johnson is a native Michigander and a lifelong resident of the Great Lakes region. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and spent 30 years working with people in the retail industry. Always an avid traveler, he changed careers and now pursues his passion for a living. Greg and his wife Kim both enjoy life as group leaders for adult and student travel. His hobbies include sports travel, yard work, family, and pets.
Joanie and Gary McGuffin
View biography
Joanie and Gary are experienced Canadian guides, explorers and photographers whose epic canoe journeys have spanned the continent. Conservation and adventure photography is their passion.
James Lenfestey
View biography
Journalist and poet James P. Lenfestey was born and raised in De Pere, Wisconsin, and educated at Dartmouth College. In 1974, he discovered the work of T’ang poet Han-shan, or Cold Mountain, whose poems offer both thematic and formal inspiration for Lenfestey’s concise, image-driven poetry. For fifteen years he chaired the Literary Witnesses poetry program in Minneapolis and led a summer poetry series on Mackinac Island, Michigan. He lives in Minneapolis and on Mackinac Island with his wife.
Suggested Reading List
(9 books)
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
The Best of Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island: A Trans-Border Discovery
Program Number: 21920
Mackinac Island (Images of America)
From historical richness to unparalleled natural beauty, Michigan's Mackinac Island is the crown jewel of the Great Lakes, unique in America. Native American visitors preceded French explorers and missionaries of the 17th century. Forts were established and battles fought between American and British soldiers. Commerce, including fur trading and fishing, later surpassed military importance, in turn yielding to the tourism industry that has dominated the past 150 years. Includes black-and-white photos.
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
Egan explores the past, present, and future of the Great Lakes and their ecologies using insightful research and political commentary.
My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island: Maude’s Mooring
Although the Winds of Mackinac Inn has been in her mother’s family for generations, Maude Welling’s father refuses to let her run it without the guidance of a husband. So she seeks to prove her worth and independence by working incognito as a maid at the Grand Hotel. Undercover journalist Ben Steffans, posing as a wealthy industrialist, pursues a story about impoverished men chasing heiresses at the famed hotel. While undercover, he becomes attracted to an intriguing maid. By an act of heroism Ben endears himself to the closed-mouthed islanders—including Maude—and he digs deep for his story. But when scandal threatens, will the growing love between Maude and Ben be scuttled when truths are revealed?
Perimeter, A Contemporary Portrait of Lake Michigan
An insightful series from photographer Kevin Miyazaki’s 1,800-mile journey around Lake Michigan. The work gives much to peruse and ponder from faces and outfits to tools and toys, but mostly the lake itself.
Sault Saint Marie (Images of America: Michigan)
Sault Ste. Marie was destined to be a gathering place. Native Americans relied on the rapids of the St. Mary’s River, which links two Great Lakes, Superior and Huron, for a year-round supply of fish. Its population swelled in the summer—a tradition that continued as French traders came to turn in their pelts and celebrate the end of another long, hard winter. After the Revolutionary War, the Sault, as it is called, became a community divided on national lines, with the United States holding one shore and Canada the other. Eventually man conquered the rapids, and today the Soo Locks transport millions of tons of freight annually to ports all over the world. Tourists are drawn by the cool breezes off the lake and the sight of steel behemoths passing almost close enough to touch.
Mackinac Island: Up Close, and Personal
This entertaining account of Mackinac Island is equal parts memoir and history as Cawthorne sets his experiences (as a carriage driver, chamber of commerce manager, state legislator, restaurateur and attorney) within the island’s last 50 years.
Traverse City, Michigan: A Historical Narrative, 1850 – 2013
One hundred-sixty-five years ago the Boardman River emptied its waters into the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay amid a vast forest of white pines, red pines, and oak trees. But for occasional villages of Odawa Indians, the area was largely uninhabited, the currents of history taking white settlers to places south and west of this isolated place at the end of a long peninsula. Sixty years later, the forests had disappeared, replaced by factories, vast retail stores made of brick, an Asylum, churches, schools, and residences as a primitive settlement grew into a small town. In time, the community shrank as residents moved away in search of better lives elsewhere in Michigan, many of them moving to the more prosperous southern part of the state. Still, change was not done: people began to return, seeking the grace the land and water offered them as they reinvented the basis upon which their lives were built. is is the story of Traverse City, Michigan and it is the story of this book.
Masters of Empire, Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America
In his well-received history, McDonnell explores the Great Lakes region from the perspective of the Anishinaabeg tribe that controlled Mackinac Island, an essential hub between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. His study discusses rivalries, trade networks, kinship and the effects of the American Revolution.
Moon Michigan (Travel Guide)
Moon Michigan reveals the best of the Great Lakes States’ charming small towns, vibrant urban hubs, and vast, untouched wilderness. Inside this guide you’ll find full coverage of Michigan, from Detroit and Ann Arbor to Mackinac Island and the Upper Peninsula.