Halloween Events If You’re Traveling to Northern Michigan
The first event takes place the during October’s first full weekend and runs Friday and Saturday, October 6-7 2006 right in downtown Saint Ignace. As part of Autumn Apple Days, the festival’s highlight is aptly named “The Giant Pumpkin Roll.” The local elementary-middle school at Gros Cap hosts a pumpkin sale. Buy your pumpkins for home or for rolling down Mahoney Hill, which is located at the north end of Saint Ignace, adjacent to the City Hall. School volunteers set up early, selling their pumpkins in the parking lot of the old IGA grocery across from the event. Along with the pumpkin sale, an annual city-wide festival takes place, including free hay rides across town, cider and small gifts available at stores, and a decorating contest up and down the main street with painted windows and a competitive scare-crow judging in front of each business. At the appointed hour, participants roll their pumpkins down the hill, competing for prizes and photographs/awards in the newspaper.
Information on the Great Pumpkin Roll and other events can be found on the Saint Ignace website’s Calendar of Events: http://www.stignace.com/
Most of the youngest students in the area remember the first part of the school year is highlighted in October with a visit to “Just a Plain Farm.” They always enjoy this much anticipated fun-filled day outdoors in lieu of classes! Busses transport the school kids just over the Mackinac Bridge to a lovely refurbished farm-house and barns located near Carp Lake, Michigan. The owners host the children, aides, volunteer parents, and the teachers to hay rides, hot cider and cookies, and a trip out to the pumpkin fields. Each child is able to choose, pick, and carry their pumpkin back to the wagon and eventually its transported to school. Some of the children are so young that the parents come into the classroom to help carry their large squash home. Eyes are often bigger than the ability to carry! Home-schoolers, pre-schoolers and visitors are more than welcome to come out and enjoy the pumpkin picking rides, and the farm also sells Halloween necessities like miniature squashes and gourds, Indian Corn, hay bales, and of course pumpkins!
Just a Plain Farm has a website describing their Halloween activities and hayrides: http://www.justaplainfarm.com/
The most favored events surrounding Halloween in Mackinac County are the various Haunted Trails, Haunted Ships, and Haunted Woods. Toddlers through grandparents enjoy walking through forest paths where they are “spooked” by local employees, teens, and young adults who dress-up and decorate the area of adventure. Saint Ignace’s Haunted Trail, located behind the Quality Inn and Big Boy on the west end of town, are now fairly elaborate. For a modest fee, participants ride on wagons and the event can be impressively chilling and thrilling. The workers tone down their scare tactics for the small fry in order to keep families coming in.
There is an associated “Trunk or Treat” event nearby, where children and teens can come to a central area, dressed in their Halloween attire for candy and prizes. Local citizens and businesses decorate the back of their trucks and vans, offering treats for the children. This event helps off-set some of the fear of contaminated articles, as the participant givers are registered and screened. It’s also a lot easier on some of the younger children who live in a rural area where the houses are spread too far for little legs.
Occasionally, the Saint Ignace Coast Guard station will have a ship in town, and the young coasties seem to get a big thrill out of decorating the ship and hosting locals through a very scary walk on board. This event is really for older children, teens, and adults – very scary! The participants receive a good share of candy, and probably the occasional nightmare for the next couple weeks! Some of the players’ make-up and decorations are incredibly graphic and gruesome. But if you like to be really scared, this is the event for you! They’ll tone it down a bit for the younger visitors, but it’s PG-13 type action, unless your little one is exceptionally fearless.
Finally, some of the more adult-oriented Halloween-themed events include a Pub Crawl on Mackinac Island and casino gambling. The holiday happens to coincide with the end-of-the-season for many of the Island’s young summer employees and brings on a last chance for partying hearty on Mackinac Island. Each year, thousands of college students and young adults travel to work and live on Mackinac, and October brings along the closing of most of the large hotels and restaurants. Horn’s Bar hosts the biggest party, and being in the center of the main road, they are a favorite with locals and tourists alike . By November, the place really IS a ghost town! But before that, time for revelry, parades, costumes and drinking on the Island with no cars and very few chances for a drunk driving tickets. (There have been incidents involving bicycles and public intoxications, but basically you’re safe not to drive here)
Horn’s Bar has many photos of their costume Halloween party: http://www.hornsbar.com/
Mackinac Island’s website offers information on Halloween events: http://www.mackinacisland.org/events.html
The local Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians’ Kewadin Shores Casino also hosts a Halloween Bash each year, but you have to be 21 years old to get in. Cash and prizes are awarded for various costume categories, they award special jackpots, and free or reduced price drinks and food buffets are available.
The Kewadin Casino’s Halloween activities are described on their website: http://www.kewadin.com/
Don’t forget the area churches, which host alternative choices to traditional Halloween night trick or treating. Finally, a few local Native American families host a traditional ghost supper, at the end of October through the first few days of November. These are largely ceremonial in nature, and a fire is burned for the weekend. Ceremonial tobacco and sage are also burned, and a place is set for those who have departed this world over the previous 12 months. The highlight of the event is a Native American (Ojibwa) feast, with whitefish, venison, wild rice, fry bread, sweet potatoes and other native and traditional food. It’s not anything like the costumes and candy of Halloween, but it’s a big event that coincides with the same holiday.
