From being voted the USA’s Best Summer Travel Destination (for the third straight year!) and the USA’s Best Place To Visit For Fall to celebrating the inaugural Fall Fudge Festival and setting a world record for longest Waboba skip, the 2025 visitor season was full of amazing memories. We hope you were able to join us for those unforgettable occasions, either in person or from afar by following along on Facebook and Instagram.
Of course, in addition to island-wide events, each individual trip to Mackinac Island is full of special moments that create a unique, one-of-a-kind experience. Likewise, each shop, restaurant and place to stay has a life of its own full of distinctive anecdotes that add ever more stitching to the day-to-day fabric of Mackinac Island.
We caught up with some of the newest members of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau to see what stands out from the 2025 visitor season and what they have in mind for 2026:
Mackinac Island Cookie Co.
Known for baking homemade cookies the size of your head, Mackinac Island Cookie Co. debuted in 2025 in a building right on the Arnold Transit ferry dock. Aside from the joy of working alongside her mom and sister, co-owner Kate Conlon happily recalls hearing “cookie lady” shouted through the store window several times per day. It also makes her smile to think of the carriage-side delivery the shop offered to drivers who stopped for a snack out front. The shop even kept carrots on hand for the horses!
“The horses recognize my voice now,” Conlon said. “They know me and that I have carrots!”
Mackinac Island Cookie Co. plans to stay open with limited hours through the winter, serving treats and coffee to year-round residents and offseason construction workers who arrive on the ferry. Looking ahead to 2026, the shop plans to add an extra case of cookies full of new flavors and an awning for the walk-up ordering window. Her mom, who cracks 96 eggs per batch of dough by hand, is going to test-kitchen new flavors this winter.
Windy Escapes Charters
Capt. Mark Case loves spreading the joy of sailing through his new charter boat business, Windy Escapes Charters. Yet even he has been surprised by how the sailing trips have affected customers.
“The absolute jubilation and glee that people get has been very eye-opening,” said Case, whose teenage son is his deckhand. “I had a 75-year-old passenger: We’re pulling in at the end of the charter and he looks at me like an 8-year-old kid, ‘Aw, it’s over?’”
Windy Escapes took its last trip of the season on the 50-foot “Stampede” in late September. The boat in June started giving groups of up to six people relaxing tours of the crystal-clear water around Mackinac Island, providing passengers with a unique view of Arch Rock and other landmarks as Case shared details on lighthouses, shipwrecks, passing freighters and more.
Looking ahead to 2026, Case plans to put new seating with metal grab bars in the bow pulpit of the boat so guests can stand up in front with the breeze in their face just like in the movie “Titanic.”
Remember Mackinac
A first-year member of the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau, Remember Mackinac actually has been in business since 2023. Owner Kohomie Jarrett makes custom, laser-engraved wood products including signs, ornaments and maps.
One memory that sticks out is of a woman running into the store and screaming, “I said, ‘Yes!’” She wanted a custom souvenir to commemorate her wedding engagement at Arch Rock. Jarrett also has made wooden welcome signs for weddings as well as name tags in the shape of Mackinac Island and engraved with the names of guests. A popular souvenir for kids is a little turtle ornament made out of wood.
“It’s the first thing they see,” said Jarrett, who goes by Kwame. “They all want this turtle ornament.”
Speaking of ornaments, Jarrett keeps busy in the offseason making custom Christmas ornaments and other holiday gifts such as wood-burned photos and interactive travel maps for national parks, lighthouses, sports stadiums and more. Among the new products coming in 2026: Pet headstones and urns.
Mackinac Market On Main
When the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau debuted a baseball-style shirt to promote the Opening Day of the 2025 visitor season, Mackinac Market On Main took notice.
“We loved it so much that we asked if we could copy it,” Grand Hotel President David Jurcak said. “Kids loved ‘em!”
Kids and adults alike enjoyed baseball shirts and other merchandise at the downtown shop that really is two shops in one: A new downtown version of Grand Hotel’s Mackinac Market and a second location for the resort’s Sadie’s Ice Cream Parlor. Sadie’s brought soft-serve ice cream to Main Street for the first time in many years, and the shop sold clothing, ornaments, magnets, tumblers, t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, bath and body products – “anything with ‘Grand Hotel’ on it” – plus generic Mackinac Island items as well.
Customers so enjoyed the aesthetics of Mackinac Market on Main, from the columns out front to yellow awnings inside, that Grand Hotel this winter is remodeling Mackinac Market inside the hotel to match Mackinac Market On Main.
The 2025 visitor season marked the debut of a dozen new Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau members. And guess what? Opening Day 2026 is coming soon! We can’t wait to see what new shops and attractions will become part of Mackinac Island’s timeless character in the coming year.
RELATED MACKINAC ISLAND BLOGS: