This past weekend on the way to speak at the Bay View Library Sunday Series in Petoskey/Bay View I was able to spend some time with a teriffic new book “Vintage Views Along the West Michigan Pike” by the spouse-husband team of M. Christine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson. The coffee table book published by Arbutus Press of Traverse City Michigan is “pure Michigan” to borrow a phrase from our state’s travel industry.

Byron and Wilson tell the story of the West Michigan Pike from its earliest days  as it evolved from a sand trail to US-31. The book, appropriately so, uses hundreds of historical photos and vintage postcards to illustrate the information packed 246 pages. The slogan for the West Michigan Pike which in large part owes it existence to bicyclists was “Lakeshore all the Way”.

The book is the fourth in a series by the Grand Rapids couple including ”Vintage Views of the Charlevoix-Petoskey Region”. The book is introduced by a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote in 1919 to some Chicago pals telling them to take the West Michigan Pike to his family’s cottage at Walloon Lake. He wrote it was “a pretty good road”.

Hemingway, his parents and his younger brother took the Pike to Walloon for the first time in 1917 driving a Model T. A wonderful photo of Hemingway holding his favorite item-a fly fishing reel illustrates the story.

As I was making my way north with a spouse-chauffeur at the wheel I was able to follow along with the Pike book. It provides a floor-board history of the numerous beach communities along the way before it meets up with the Dixie Highway in Mackinac City.

This book should be in every cottage and business along the serpentine path of the West Michigan Pike. It’s full of memories and its a great guide to creating new ones. The postcards are not only a historic look at the road which takes you along Michigan’s Riviera but also just plain fun. They will make you long for a time when BBQ joints, festivals, cottage living and beach resorts were an adventure to be savored.

Take some time this summer to explore the West Michigan Pike, but don’t do it without “Vintage Views Along the West Michigan Pike”. During my talk to the Bay View Library group I was able to show them this new book and as expected they were pretty enthralled by the story it tells.