BOYNE FALLS, Michigan — We don’t just play golf on our travel writing trips. While visiting Boyne Mountain in Michigan this week we walked the world’s longest timber-towered suspension bridge — called Skybridge Michigan.
The bridge, which has become a popular tourist attraction at the Boyne Mountain Resort, stretches 1,200 feet in length above the Boyne Valley below. The bridge is 120 feet from the Valley floor. You get to and from it from an historic chairlift. The Hemlock Scenic Chairlift was the first in the United States, installed at Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1938, then transferred to Michigan and rebuilt at Boyne in 1948.
The bridge offers spectacular panoramic views and has glass flooring in the middle to enhance viewing of the Valley floor. Quite an adventure from the chairlift ride up to the walk across the bridge.
Fall is the best season to visit the Skybridge.
“It’s so much about how the valley looks then,’’ said Ken Griffin, director of sales and marketing at the Boyne resorts. He said the bridge could hold 5,000 people but never more than 500 have been on it at one time.
