Old-Line Lodging on the Lakes

Lakeside lolling is a Midwest tradition. Honor it in Gilded Age style at the 320-room Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, queen mother of Great Lakes resorts. The 660-foot-long porch is a thing of languorous splendor with 220 rocking chairs, the better to contemplate brightly gardened grounds and the Straits of Mackinac, where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet. Some four-fifths of the 2,300-acre Mackinac Island is state parkland, most of it white pine and birch forest, and motor vehicles, even mopeds, are verboten. Dressing up after 6 P.M.--the rule at the hotel since it was built in 1887--makes a kicky close to a day of cycling, hiking, or in-line skating on paved and dirt roads and trails. The Grand's per-person rates ($160, $140 after Labor Day) include breakfast and a formal five-course dinner. For reservations call 800-334-7263 or 906-847-3331.

Watch the Great Lakes' grand exit from Lake Ontario into the head of the St. Lawrence River at Ivy Lea Resort & Marina (800-342-2935 or 613-659-2329), just over the Canadian border. In the 1870s, Captain E. W. Visger, who skippered an excursion boat, built a wood-frame lodge that still stands as Ivy Lea's lacy-looking main building and dining hall. Now on the mend after years of neglect, the resort faces the Navy Group of the Thousand Islands, which are really more like 1,500 islands, in Ontario and New York. Hang out in the historic lodge but sleep in recently renovated motel units (doubles, $47; $34 after Labor Day) or in three-bedroom cottages that take up to eight ($67, $48 after Labor Day). Bring wheels to ride the 22-mile bikeway along the river, or a kayak to lose yourself in the islands. Swim from two beaches, or just explore the resort's 45 wooded acres. The resort is about three miles west of the Interstate 81 bridge, 104 miles from Syracuse, New York.

Life was once very earnest and right-thinking in Lakeside on Lake Erie, on Ohio's Marblehead Peninsula, where Methodists first held summertime camp meetings in 1873. The half-mile-square grounds became and remain a traditional Chautauqua colony, with a 92-room clapboard hotel that dates to 1875 and some 800 family cottages, many of them dangerously cute gingerbread mini-Victorians. After Labor Day, the colonists' summer of concerts, lectures, and G-rated entertainment ceases, the hotel closes, and Lakeside slips into a righteous hush. Slip into it yourself, with lake swimming, cycling, and strolling, by setting up house in one of the cottages that owners rent out for about $350-$1,100 per week. Contact the Lakeside Association (419-798-4461). Lakeside is about 90 miles west of Cleveland, 115 miles east of Detroit.

Jolli Lodge, on Lake Michigan south of Leland, Michigan, a couple miles from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, time-warps back to the 1950s, with kitsch-comfy furnishings gathered by a garage-sale-addict owner. Boomers might wake up imagining they're still in fourth grade. The illusion can be shaken off on land, which rises in Saharalike dunes and forested hills, or on the lake, ringed by some of the country's most glorious beaches. The younger members of the Jolliffe family, who now manage the resort, are gung-ho cyclists, sea kayakers, and all-around outdoorsies and will point the way for you. Through Labor Day, the 16 one- to three-bedroom cabins with kitchenettes rent strictly by the week; only six lodge rooms, $60-$75, are available nightly. Then things get looser, with daily cabin rates of $75. Call 616-256-9291. Leland is 289 miles from Detroit, 342 from Chicago.