Sometimes, the obvious lies at our own doorstep. We Midwesterners often eschew the Heartland as a serious destination because it lacks the powerful beauty of, say, Colorado’s majestic mountains or the Southwest’s ancient red canyons.
So we miss some surprisingly beautiful sights and some revelations about our own region.
For decades I’ve lived within a mile or so of Lake Michigan. And when I’m in Chicago barely a day goes by without my seeing the lake. Like most Chicagoans, I love the lake. But sometimes we take for granted things we love.
In search of a short getaway, I recently suggested to my wife that we drive around Lake Michigan. It wasn’t a novel idea. Tens of thousands of people have driven around the lake. Guidebooks have been written about circle tours of Lake Michigan. Signs on local lampposts even mark the route. But I had never done the drive, and neither had she. At various points in our lives, both of us had seen different parts of the lake, but we hadn’t driven around the whole thing. So several weeks ago, we took off to circle Lake Michigan and see what we would find.
What a revelation! Not only did we enjoy powerful lakescapes, still beaches and soaring dunes, but bucolic farmland, also orchards, forests and some very appealing small towns during our six-day, 1,315-mile drive. We also began to see our lake in a new way.
We blitzed past Michigan City, New Buffalo and Union Pier, heading north. It was nice to relax in Saugatuck, where we spent the night in an elegant bed-and-breakfast then paused the next day in Holland to see how tastefully the city has preserved its downtown.
From there we followed U.S. Highway 31 north through pretty farm country and turned coastward to lunch at Pentwater, touted in a recent Midwest Living magazine as a hidden gem. Hidden it is, but hardly a gem unless you can appreciate real life in small towns. As we finished lunch, some local men filed in for their regular 2 p.m. kaffeeklatsch.
Back on U.S. 31, we scooted through Pere Marquette State Forest, past Interlochen (noted for its Center for the Arts) and into Traverse City.
Fast-food franchises and other utilitarian businesses sprawl along the southern outskirts of Traverse City, a town built by 19th Century lumber barons. The town itself, with a solid five- or six-block long main street with shops, restaurants and a good bookstore, serves as a resort hub. It offers an array of accommodations on Grand Traverse Bay and myriad vacation activities.
On our one full day in the Traverse City area, we drove the charming Old Mission Peninsula, and then circled Leelanau Peninsula to the west. Old Mission, a hilly, 17-mile finger of land that pokes north into Grand Traverse Bay, harbors the best of unspoiled rural America. We followed a two-lane road through dark forests of maples, beeches, oaks and pines and up over curvaceous hills covered with orderly rows of vines, cherry and apple trees. We spotted beautiful old barns nestled in deep valleys and glimpsed the fiordlike waters of the bay from open hilltops. We dead-ended at Old Mission Lighthouse, which stands on the 45th parallel, overlooking a marvelous stretch of quiet beach. On our return, we paused at a winery with a bed-and-breakfast. From the terrace we gazed over vineyards stretching toward the bay, a vista that echoed a spot we know outside Geneva, Switzerland.
On the Leelanau Peninsula, a broader thumb that forms the western shore of Grand Traverse Bay, we paused at upscale Suttons Bay. We strolled the pleasant main street and popped into Bahle’s, a dry goods store that has been in business since 1876 and still has some of its old-store trappings. We continued on in rain past farms and orchards, to Omena, Northport (home of a fascinating shop chock-full of frothy Victorian dresses and somber men’s suits) and finally to Leland for lunch.
Leland, sandwiched between Lake Leelanau and Lake Michigan, could be a village in Maine. Gray, weathered fish houses now occupied by seasonal businesses flank its harbor, known as Fishtown. Fishing boats line the inlet. From a bridge and a motel balcony, visitors fished for salmon fighting their way up a ladder to a spawning bed.
From Leland we continued southward in drizzle to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, a masterpiece created by ice, wind and water. The twisty 7.1-mile Pierce Stocking Drive offered an insightful look at how this 35-mile-long preserve along Lake Michigan was formed. The rolling drive tunneled through dense beech and pine forests and climbed over dunes held in place by tall grasses and junipers. One vantage point atop a 450-foot dune — the equivalent of a 45-story building — offered splendid views of the lake and lakeshore.
The following day we continued north along Grand Traverse Bay to Petoskey, a trim resort town whose impeccably restored Gaslight Shopping District is full of tasteful shops, among them another splendid bookstore stocked with good regional titles.
Beyond Petoskey, we turned into tiny Bay View and were astonished by its atmosphere. A cottage colony dating to the late 1800s with some 400 homes on the National Register of Historic Places, Bay View could be in a time warp or a movie set. The pastel Victorian summer houses
that stairstep up from the bay have wrap-around porches on the first and second floors and patriotic bunting draped on railings.
Farther north we took a stroll in Harbor Springs, a chic resort village, and then, on the advice of a shop clerk, followed snaking, two-lane Michigan 119 for 27 spectacular miles along Lake Michigan’s heavily wooded shores. We snailed along beneath a canopy of trees, spotting deer among birch and wild turkeys along the road and glimpsing estates, an elegant horse farm, and always the lake.
Soon we zipped over the 5-mile Mackinac Bridge, one of the world’s longest suspension spans, connecting the Lower and Upper Peninsulas of Michigan.
Along U.S. Highway 2, which skirts Lake Michigan’s north shore, the land was flatter, harsher, less manicured, but dramatic. Along a stretch of road mere feet from the lake, southern winds whipped sand and spray across the road. Towns we passed were practical, ungentrified, and the names people gave their cottages and farms reflected the land — Thorny Farms, Stony Fields, Tall Timber.
We pushed on to Manistique, and then to Escanaba, both practical anchors on the U.P.
We spent our final night in Ephraim, a gem of a village in Door County. Oft described as the Midwest’s Cape Cod, Door County, though somewhat more commercial than it was a decade ago, has kept out fast-food franchises and glitz.
The most reassuring thing about this drive was our discovery that the beautiful and prosperous rural America we thought had vanished still exists. Much of what is precious has been preserved. We also came away with a new appreciation for our lake, having finally circled this powerful shaper of land and lives.
———-
Alfred Borcover’s e-mail address is aborcover@aol.com
