From the ferry dock, La Pointe extends for a couple of quiet blocks. The Beach Club is the local hangout, where residents down Leinenkugel's and discuss the ferocity of the summer's sand flies while waiting for the ferry to show up. The tiny, five-room Island Inn or Cadotte's Cottages, both just a block or two from the ferry landing, are good town bases from which to explore. Madeline has some 35 miles of paved and gravel roads, with hardly a hill to whine about the entire way. Pick up rental bikes in town at Motion To Go, and head off.
Traffic is light to nonexistent, so kids can swerve around with relative impunity.
Outside of town the roads become shaded, overarched by sugar maples and paper birch, and the summer homes that cluster along gravel lanes seem transported from New England. For quick immersion in the island's backcountry, the best spot is Big Bay, a sheltered curve of shoreline midway along Madeline's southeast side. The 2,400-acre state park, with two campgrounds, is about seven miles out of town. Spring the kids loose on the two miles of curving, white-sand beach. Locals boast that Lake Superior's temperature alternates between frozen ice and liquid ice, but the calm water in Big Bay can heat up to a tolerable swimming temperature, and children will dive in until their lips turn blue.