Ernest Hemingway’s favorite vacation spot beckons, and it’s just half a day’s drive from Chicago in northern Michigan.
The globe-trotting author is more associated with bullfighting in Spain, movable feasts in Paris, big-game hunting on African safaris and sport fishing in Key West and Cuba.
But Michigan was his first vacation love. This was where he spent time at his parents’ cottage for 20 years. This was where he was married and honeymooned with his first wife, Hadley Richardson. This was where he set one of his first novels, “The Torrents of Spring.”
As a boy and young man, Ernie roamed the woods, fished the waters and hung out in the towns of the Little Traverse Bay region, about 360 miles north of Chicago by land on the northeast shore of Lake Michigan. Visitors today can follow his life at Walloon Lake, Horton Bay, Petoskey, Harbor Springs and Boyne City.
Ardent Hemingway fans already know all about his northern Michigan connection. But many others are not aware that this was where the Nobel Prize-winning author spent boyhood summers. Tracking down Hemingway can add a fascinating bonus to a vacation here.
A good place to start is the Little Traverse History Museum on the waterfront in Petoskey. Housed in the renovated Chicago and West Michigan train depot (built in 1892), it displays more than 60 Hemingway-related photos, his books inscribed to local friends and items from the family cottage.
Photos show a young Hemingway, slim and without the iconic beard of his later Papa years. The museum, which attracts visitors from around the world, showcases details about his life here in the early 20th century.
Northern Michigan sparked his creative juices.
Michael Federspiel, the museum’s director and president of the Michigan Hemingway Society, put it this way: “To a young boy, this was his first exotic location. It fed his imagination. He mined Michigan for locations and characters.”
That resulted in “The Nick Adams Stories.” Nick, a fictionalized stand-in for the author, embarks on adventures in northern Michigan, including the one described in “Big Two-Hearted River.”
This passage from “The Nick Adams Stories” describes what Nick/Hemingway felt about his boyhood here: “He loved the long summer more than anything … fishing in the bay, reading in the hammock on hot days, swimming off the dock, playing baseball at Charlevoix and Petoskey.”
Petoskey was the setting for “The Torrents of Spring.” Another northern Michigan reference is in the story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
Born in 1899 in Oak Park, he went to Michigan as a baby. His parents fell in love with the northern Lower Peninsula, bought a waterfront lot on Walloon Lake and built a summer cottage they named Windemere. (Now a private home, it is not open to the public.)
While drivers now can zoom up from Chicago in about six hours, the Hemingway family faced a journey of as long as 24 hours via steamship across the lake to Harbor Springs, then took a train to Petoskey and Walloon Lake Village, then a boat to their cottage.
Today’s vacationers can plan a self-guided Hemingway tour by picking up a copy of the brochure “Hemingway’s Michigan” at the Little Traverse History Museum or Petoskey Area Visitors Bureau. It has historic pictures and maps to guide you to 11 sites with roadside markers in Petoskey, Horton Creek and Boyne City-Charlevoix.
Start in Petoskey with eight sites. Among them:
Want to sleep where Hemingway stayed in 1916 and paid a whopping 75 cents? Stafford’s Perry Hotel, built in 1899, is the last of the original resort hotels in Petoskey. The 17-year-old Hemingway overnighted there after a hiking and camping trip with a friend. Unfortunately, the Perry has not designated a specific Hemingway room.
The Carnegie Library Building was a Hemingway favorite haunt when he lived in Petoskey in the winter of 1919-20 while trying to hone his writing skills. As a cub reporter on the Kansas City Star in 1917, he had started to evolve his trademark style — lean, unadorned prose, short sentences, short paragraphs.
In 1918 he launched his macho persona by volunteering at age 18 to drive a Red Cross ambulance in war-torn Italy.
“After he was wounded in Italy in World War I, he convalesced in Petoskey. He always came back to Michigan. It was his retreat,” said Chris Struble, a board member of the Michigan Hemingway Society and owner of Petoskey Yesterday, a tour company with a Hemingway specialty.
In December 1919, he regaled the Ladies Aid Society with his war stories at the Carnegie library.
Despite his hard-drinking image, Hemingway was serious about his writing. “He had to write five hours in the morning before he would go partying,” Struble said.
Another lodging option with a Hemingway link is Shangri-La House in Boyne City. This was where he celebrated his first wedding reception with a champagne brunch Sept. 3, 1921.
With a little imagination, you can envision Hemingway and his bride rowing from the Walloon Lake public access and boat launch to their honeymoon at Windemere. That event was fictionalized by Nick Adams and Helen in “Wedding Day.”
The quiet village of Horton Bay, 10 miles southwest of Petoskey, is the location of the Horton Bay General Store, in business since 1876. Hemingway often visited there. A two-room B&B is upstairs.
At the Red Fox Inn, adjacent to the store, you’ll find a bookstore that specializes in Hemingway books.
He is justly famous in this region, but much has changed since his last visit in 1947. If Papa returned, he probably would praise his parents for picking such a popular vacation spot, which now boasts more than 2,800 rooms in hotels, inns, resorts and motels.
In addition to the usual joys of boating, beaching and hiking through the woods, today’s visitors can ride bicycles down hilly trails at Boyne Highlands Resort in Harbor Springs and Boyne Mountain Resort in Boyne Falls, soar on a parachute in Boyne City, golf at 14 courses, float over Walloon Lake in a hot-air balloon and race over trees on zip lines in Boyne City and Harbor Springs.
But what would Papa do? He likely would go trout fishing in Horton Creek — then write about it.
If you go
Guides to sites
A comprehensive list of Hemingway sites in northern Michigan can be accessed at michiganhemingwaysociety.org. Also check out mihemingwaytour.org and tinyurl.com/michiganauthor.
Where to stay
Stafford’s Perry Hotel, 231-347-4000, staffords.com/perryhotel.
Shangri-La House, 231-582-7567, shangrilahouse.com.
Horton Creek Inn B&B, 231-582-5373, hortoncreekinnbb.com.
Boyne Highlands and Boyne Mountain, 800-462-6963, boyne.com.
What to do
Little Traverse History Museum, 231-347-2620, petoskeymuseum.org. The museum also offers Hemingway tours.
A vacation guide with information on lodging and outdoor activities is available from the Petoskey Area Visitors Bureau, 800-845-2828, petoskeyarea.com.
Other Hemingway-related tours are run by Petoskey Yesterday, 231-330-9657, petoskeyyesterday.com.
