Moving: Mackinac Style

A few weeks ago my friend, Wendy, moved into a new apartment. On Mackinac Island moving everything you own means you have to order a dray. A dray is a sort of like a horse-drawn pick -up truck bed, only considerably larger. Both sides fold of the dray down and the back is removable. The City Council does issue vehicle permits for jobs requiring a motorized vehicle, but if the job can be done by horse power they understandably will not issue a permit. For a move like this, hiring the dray costs about $65.00.

The Service Company dropped off the dray the night before so we could start loading early.

It took two full loads to move everything the two blocks to Wendy's new place. We could have moved everything behind our snowmobiles instead, but it would have taken much longer.

Some of the roads and paths on the island are quite narrow since they were designed for bikes and snowmobiles rather than cars. This narrow path caused the one issue we had during the move; a leaning tree pulled a shelf and an antique drop-leaf table off the side of the dray. The shelf hit a tree and met an untimely death, but luckily the table landed in the soft snow and lived to serve another meal. Wendy has everything in her new place, now she just needs to unpack...