We Explore a Tiny Off Grid Island in Lake Huron With a Cool Story - Charity Island

there's a 222 acre piece of land out there early fishermen said it was placed there only by the charity of God in the middle of Sagen Bay between Michigan's thumb and index finger if you had to cross the bay in those early days it was a savior in the middle of the bay where you could stop and rest if a sudden Squall kicked up eventually they put a lighthouse on it but it's not good for ships because it's so shallow around on the island we're headed out to explore big charity Island its beauty its history and its current resident I'm Chuck I'm Poppins the Channel's Restless Viking let's go on an adventure [Music] so we're just uh about a mile and a half away from the lighthouse and it's really shallow here already and then out there it's only a couple feet deep so this is obviously a very dangerous place for uh ships to come through which is why there's a lighthouse so as we get closer to the island you can see a breake wall that was recently built within the past couple decades built by the current resident of the island but I see some other cabins over there 90% of this island is a refuge for wildlife so this break wall was made and the marina that we're going to go into was built just a few years ago maybe uh in the 9s the guy that owned the island Bob decided that it'd have a better future as a wildlife sanctuary so he sold most of it after he blasted this Marina with dynamite you can see the little cut that goes in right there and one of the issues with this brake wall is that sand accumulates rather quickly so it needs to be dredged it's very shallow so we got to kind of pick our way in if that makes sense got to bring that motor way up he said so we'll see oh we are inching our way through this channel it is shallow holy cow those are Channel markers marking the path between the shallow space holy cow so as Chuck said Bob like used Dynamite 60,000 lb I think to blow this out this is amazing you can see the Limestone on the bank where they had to cut down it's pretty darn cool well we made it that was a piece of cake and whoa was this the right doc sorry well as long you don't fall in uh yeah for the most part fun we hop in balance in the back balance in the back so I get the marina built and then the feds expressed an interest in buying it and uh so we never finished developing a lot of this and the feds have Let It Go Wild we met Bob and Karen the owners of the charity Island Lighthouse the day before at their new campground on the mainland before they left for the island we spent some time chatting and they graciously invited us to spend the night with gratitude and curiosity we accepted eager to experience the magic of their cherished Island home oh my okay so let's see we've got four bedrooms up here oh we brought sleeping bags too so we can just used to uh build this place no those were the plans of the previous house wow and he had eight Cruis of guys and every year they did a project together they would take a weekend and do one project and he would pay them cash they'd have a blast on the weekend doing it together and so we were their project for the year so they came out and it just worked out this is my mom and my aunt and my great grandpa and my great grandma and my grand uncle and my grandpa right after we arrived Karen took the time to give us a quick tour of the rebuilt keeper quarters in the grounds of the lighthouse she spoke of the simple joy they found in sharing their tranquil Haven her eyes twinkling with a Serene knowledge that only 30 Seasons living at the lighthouse could [Applause] bestow so Poppins made a phone call to Bob it ended up he uh kind of invited us to stay the night um and stuff with him but of course if you're going to stay the night you got to offer to do some work or something to kind of help out look at them look at them go over there is the brake wall that we came in on and then the uh Keeper's House here was uh the old Keeper's House was in terrible shape um when they purchased it so they ended up raising it using the foundation and uh they had some guys come out and build it and now it's a self- sustaining place they get their water from the lake they got the solar panels to charge the battery bank they used to give dinner cruises here here over there's the gift shop Light Tower still kind of in disrepair the charity Island light was built in 1857 the 39t brick Tower is soon to be renovated by the wils on June 3rd 1916 the light was automated then abandoned in the' 40s the Keeper's House was eventually enlarged and in 2003 it was rebuilt by Bob and Karen because the previous house couldn't be saved [Music] [Music] stairs down there have the mortar separated from the brick wall so it's very unstable Bob was able to swap property with a Land Conservancy for the tower in 2016 and began to pursue historic restoration of the tower cribbing had to be installed a few years ago to hold the lantern room Bob says one of his final goals in life is to restore the tower he would get his waiters on and then he Carry Me on his back on the shore i' never da on us to get two pair of waiters barge my barge in my Tu H we cherish the long conversations we had with Bob and Karen the gentle murmur of waves provided a soothing backdrop to our conversation as a cacophony of birds loudly discussed bird things our gracious couple exuded warmth and our conversation flowed easily punctuated by laughter and reflection of emotional moments with guests you go 100 ft in that tree line you go in there and you stick a shovel in the the dirt you're going to find the remains of tool manufacturing that went on out here for for generations and I was fascinated by it Bob recall a story about one elderly guest who had listened to her grandfather's stories as a little girl her Grandad was a keeper on charity Island while listening to his story she promised to someday visit the island it was a stormy day and Bob reluctantly agreed to bring the family out even though the tour was cancelled this was her only chance to fulfill that promise to her granddad [Music] all pile it in he's helping her up the stairs I said we're going to go to start in the basement and I run down there and they're all milled around they're looking at the uh sistern in the battery bank and and uh he asked me one of her sons the attorney asked me something asked me a question and I said well I started to explain this to him and then I hear this uh it was like she was crying it was just sob and uh I turned to look and this M Elson are at the base of the stairs she's got her hand on that old life so long and she's just staring at it and that we all heard it and when I turned we all turned and everybody's quiet nobody's saying a word and her hand was shaking you know and she stared at that wall like and then she said he have seen this very wall every night he came down to get the oil I realized a yeah she's right those guys came down that stairway every night to that wall and she heard about it as a little girl and when she saw that wall she she was yeah Bob and Karen are amazing people they call themselves serial entrepreneurs but what they secretly did by doing a little bit of development on the island to develop a harbor and to restore the Li house was to bring a lot of specialness to a lot of people and some of the stories that they have to tell about people coming back to visit where their great-grandfather was their grandfather is just amazing so Poppins and I are in a bit of a walk through the uh Trails which are there aren't many so it took them 16 weeks and 8 miles of drilling to blast this area this Marina which were it made it able to bring people here then they started dinner cruises and then the people would wait here under this canopy area then they would all walk together up to the house if they couldn't walk then they brought their their mule their four-wheel drive vehicle and they would bring people up to the house so this this is the remnants of the dinner cruises which I think were done just before Co so this is where you could come up from the boat that's uh that's Bob and Karen's boat so if we talk about the remoteness of Charity Island here's a story that may give you an idea of how remote it is the first lightkeeper on the island was Colin Graham he was a Scottish Mariner he moved here with his wife and his 12 children his boys had the mission that when the saes would come out of saga their mission was to grow out into the water as those boats dropped things into the water for them supplies newspapers the boys would pick it up and then Colin would unroll those newspapers in front of the fireplace to dry them out so that he could know what was happening in the Civil War in 1863 that's how remote and disconnected this place is before Colin could be a lightkeeper they had to build a lighthouse and the lighthouse is going to be on land owned by the state of Michigan but the federal government needed to have the land in their name so they built the lighthouse but what changed that just a few days before he was assassinated Abraham Lincoln signed the executive order transferring this island under control so that they could have the lighthouse and there's the rubble from blasting out the marina that's quite a [Music] project he has a racing stripe go Little Toad when the lighthouse open the federal government decided that they did not need to be keeping this entire Island into themselves so they kind of divided a line that cut out the lighthouse from the rest of the island and uh they sold it to Gillingham Fish Company and Gillingham had a fishing shack or a fishing station here on the island um where they would uh bring in fish and actually sagona Bay was one of the largest Fisheries in the uh in the world at one time they sold it to another developer who um decided they couldn't really develop it and then Bob and Karen wilz took it over in 1992 when the island fell into private hands there was so much history here the it's a migratory bird stop so so Bob acquires this island with the idea that he could maybe develop it but he's got to go through the permitting process which eventually led to he needed an archaeologist he needed a geologist he needed a rock hound and all these people with certifications that we he would have to bring out to the island and pay them to do surveys of the island and in that time they found all kinds of historical connections from the things that they got Bob paid for so much work on this island that our history our records our documents the history of this island the great lakes and even further is better for it because a private individual paid all that money for the permitting process that caused all the research to happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise he sold the island back to the government keeping the lighthouse Keepers dwelling but our serial entrepreneurs weren't done yet because they started doing dinner cruises where they brought people out and they shared the history that they discovered and then the people that came here share the stories of their ancestors or their great great grandfather that came out to this island all this lost history can come back together here so the dinner cruises became a big hassle and uh Karen got sick and they just couldn't do it anymore and then Co of course happened so they don't have dinner cruises anymore once the Channel's dredged out it looks like a couple local captains will be bringing people out here again and you can even rent their keeper quarters but you can have quite an outing out here with with your friends and family power system of the lighthouse I will there she is going to get The Grand Tour here now and they put in the sistern so the way they built the sistern was they had e troughs that would all come into this area their kitchen is where ours was and they had a stand pipe that went up to the kitchen now when they when they put the sister in here men don't have to go down to the lake and carry water up to the house right they just uh the rain comes off the roof it goes into here you see there's a there's a brick wall right there yeah that's the filter wall so the water filters through the brick and then they they uh on the top up there they pump it and it draws the water up through the filter so yeah know it's that's Inus yeah it is it the inverter sucks the power out of the battery magic happens it turns into alternating current sends it in Powers all the loads if the batteries are getting low and this guy isn't happy the battery voltage is too low it'll send a signal to the generator if I switch it over to Auto and and it'll start the generator the generator will bring the power in and it will feel the tickle of AC coming in it say oh okay it's it looks good I'm going to allow it to take over these loads it becomes a battery charger sets power down these and starts charging the batteries 11:03 and uh we uh get to stay up we get to stay here which is pretty cool it's morning at the charity Island light swallow are all over the place we going to pack up and uh spend a little extra time here and then head home was this as we come around the [Applause] it's fun adventures really yeah out of the weather yeah what's that called that you put well thank you very much it was thank you for all your hospitality believe me we got more we did have [Music] fun here she goes so now we we leave a a wonderful place wonderful experience big charity Island it uh it was really a blast thank you Bob and Karen and now we're headed back to the campground we're going to have some winds ahead of us if you ever get a chance when they open the island back up come on out and experience some history some lovely people and a great time beautiful area so I'm Chuck I'm Poppins until our next adventure we'll catch you later

Channel: Restless Viking

Views: 52,491

Keywords: restless viking, chuck the viking, martha poppins, visiting remote locations, travel the world less traveled, explore adventure, inspire through travel, great lakes history, michigan history, charity island, saginaw bay, charity island lighthouse, lake huron, charity island michigan, adventure explore discover, saginaw michigan history

Id: eZwiItqNeZY

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024