The Upper Peninsula remains a place apart, even though it has been linked to the Lower Peninsula since 1957 by a bridge that gracefully leaps the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw). If the peninsula is bitterly cold for much of the year, the languorous summers there are enchanting. The romantic landscape became one of the most famous locales in America literature as the "shores of Gitche Cumee," the setting for Longfellow's narrative poem The Song of the Hiawatha, which he based in part on the legends of Indians in this region.

A highlight of the area is also one of Michigan's greatest natural splendors - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Extending for miles along the southern coast of Lake Superior, it is a realm of spectacular, multicolored rock cliffs sculpted by the elements into caves, arches, and other fantastic shapes.

Poised between the two peninsulas is Mackinac Island. The British built a fort, now restored, on the island in 1780, and after the War of 1812 John Jacob Astor's fur company established a post there. In the words of the poet William Cullen Bryan, "the manifest destiny of Mackinac Island is to be a watering place." In the second half of the 19th century Mackinac did indeed become one of the nation's premier resorts, attracting the cream of midwestern society. Their favorite stopping place was the Grand Hotel, which opened in 1887 and is noted especially for its 880 - foot - long veranda a overlooking Lake Huron and the Straits of Mackinac.

With spectacular vistas rivaling those of the seaboard states, Mackinac Island is a place where the vastness of the Great Lakes is most apparent. But there is another spot with an equally commanding view - although it is a bit less accessible than the Grand Hotel's veranda. Astronauts travelling to the moon discovered that among the few terrestrial features visible to them where these five lakes, earthly mirrors shining into the infinity of space.