The Great Lakes: Cruising Through North America's Great Inland Seas

We will begin in Toronto, enjoying magnificent views of the city’s iconic architecture as we depart. Amidst the monumental endeavor of the Welland Canal, which opened the entire Great Lakes region to intercontinental commerce, we’ll delight in the awesome thunder and spray of Niagara Falls.

We’ll sail past the skyline of Detroit, then experience the unique traditions of the Ojibwe people, who still hold their ancestral lands of Manitoulin Island as the only First Nations tribe never to cede title to their lands.

The centerpiece of our week on the vast sweet waters is Mackinac Island. Horse-drawn carriages will roll us through perfectly preserved 19th-century lanes towards the colonnaded porch of the Grand Hotel; we’ll then witness musket firing demonstrations at Fort Mackinac, built by the British during the American Revolution. Look up, as we sail away, to the soaring expanse of the Mackinac Bridge.

On the Keweenaw Peninsula, we’ll survey 150-year-old ruins of smelting works from the Great Copper Rush while rambling through bucolic towns and mossy forests before continuing to Thunder Bay, where a British fort beneath the Sleeping Giant headland awaits our inspection.

Three centuries ago, hunters and trappers discovered the wealth of the Great Lakes. One-and-a-half centuries ago, miners gleaned the hills here. From 1900 to 1950, the Great Lakes were the premier vacation spot for Americans. Experience what we’ve forgotten—aboard the elegant, newly refurbished, all-suite Clelia II—all so close to home.