Journey along the coastline of Lake Michigan in search of historic lighthouses, family run fisheries, and much more.
The Explorer’s Guide to Road Tripping Around the Great Lakes

Across Main Street from Portage Lake, a locally loved restaurant called The Glenwood now occupies an early 1900s building that once housed “Fountain of Youth” bottled water and later operated as a summer resort. For the past 30 years, the white tablecloth and knotty pine-paneled dining room has bridged a delicate gap—charmingly stuck in time without feeling dated. It’s the kind of place where an annual one-week vacation isn’t complete until you’ve dined here.

“Some people stop at the restaurant before unpacking their cars,” co-owner Donna Ervin says. Reserve a table on the enclosed porch overlooking the water and order a French 75 made with locally grown and distilled Iron Fish gin, the blue cheese-studded “woodland salad” with chef-owner Chris Short’s cherry mustard vinaigrette, and the freshwater perch or whitefish that come on dinner plates inked with the Glenwood name.

Gwen Frostic was, until her death in 2001, one of the Midwest’s most treasured artists. The Michigan native—who never married, never drove, and lived until the day before her 95th birthday—was known for block prints of morel mushrooms, forest trillium, barn owls, birch bark trees, the first violets of spring, the amphibians in her beloved “frog pond,” and more. Despite a 1906 fever (likely polio) that forever affected the mobility of her hands, Frostic would sketch images in nature, carve those images onto linoleum blocks, then stamp them onto deckle-edged greeting cards.

“Every vein in every leaf is true to life,” the late Frostic once said. In the 1960s, the extraordinary pioneer purchased 40 acres in the rural countryside near Benzonia and worked with area tradesmen to construct a grass-roofed building made of giant boulders and beams. Equal parts studio, printing press, nature library, and personal residence, this sanctuary can still be visited today. Stepping into Frostic’s cavernous studio is like walking into an illustrated children’s book, one where a mouse family is knitting inside a tree trunk. In this case, that idyllic scene is accompanied by the hum and rattle of Frostic’s vintage Heidelberg printing presses.

On the water’s edge in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, this cherry-red building emblazoned with white letters was once the Glen Haven Canning Co. Instead of packing stone fruit, it is now home to a boat museum. Inside are various vessels that tell the story of boating in Lake Michigan’s Manitou passage and surrounds, including an Anishinaabek dugout canoe that was found submerged in nearby Platte Lake, a green and black utility boat that was used between the 1920s and 1960s to transport crews and supplies to lighthouses throughout the region, and a 36-foot self-bailing and self-righting Coast Guard lifeboat that was used for foul weather rescue in deep waters.

“My friend Jim worked on ... rescue boats,” a museum volunteer says to visitors when showing them this mid-mod vessel. “He told me it took forever to go out on a run and that the helicopter really changed that.” Stay on dry land and search instead for the fresnel lens that came from the light station on nearby North Manitou Island or the ice harvesting tools that were used to keep fish fresh before the era of refrigeration. Don’t forget to take that photo before you go—the red building, blue waters, and yellow dune grass are a primary color lover’s paradise.

Suspended over the mouth of the Leland River, where water tumbles over a dam that connects Lake Leelanau to the ombre turquoise shoreline of Lake Michigan, is Fishtown, a preserved and protected collection of turn-of-the-last-century fishing shanties. If you look beyond the Teva-tanned tourists, this historic anglers’ village is also still home to wooden reels used to dry fishing nets at night, smokehouses, and working fishing boats—including the iconic green and white Joy, which is still used to catch whitefish.

Today, each pint-size shanty houses a retail shop—from a vintage-era candy store to the beloved Cheese Shanty sandwich shop to a merchant selling souvenirs emblazoned with a tug logo that was inspired by the Joy herself. The most emblematic shanty is Carlson’s Fishery—where members of the Carlson family have been gutting, pinboning, fileting, and smoking whitefish, lake trout, chub, and walleye for five generations.

Michigan is home to some 129 lighthouses, more than any other state in the country, and the one at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula—located on the 45th parallel looking out across Grand Traverse Bay’s azure waters—is as idyllic as they get. Meander up route M-37, past the many riesling, pinot gris, and cab franc vineyards that make this one of the most celebrated AVAs in the Midwest, until the state highway essentially dead ends into the lake.

This notoriously shallow shoal at the tip of a finger of land that separates Grand Traverse Bay into East Bay and West Bay was quite dangerous when the lighthouse was built, shortly after the American Civil War. The two-and-a-half-story white clapboard structure set atop a sand dune isn’t tall, but a fifth order fresnel lens produced an intense beam that could be seen up to 13 miles away, until it was replaced by a modern off-shore buoy light.

Not far from Earl Young’s beloved stone “mushroom houses” is Terry’s Place, and the line to dine begins forming at 4 p.m. It ultimately stretches down Antrim Street away from the Charlevoix Marina and East Park until 5 o’clock, when they begin letting customers in. As the regional and national press from the 1980s that still adorns the walls attests (why hello there Molly Abraham), this no-reservations destination is the place to enjoy whitefish, perch, or walleye from Charlevoix’s own John Cross Fisheries.

Customers can choose which cold-water caught fish they would like and whether they would like it prepared meunière, almondine, Robinson, or grenobloise. Go grenobloise—the fish is pan sautéed and served with lemon beurre blanc and capers. The escargot is tempting too, if only because it’s not often that you can still find it served in the proper porcelain dish set atop a white paper doily. But be careful not to over order. The pieces of clean, white-fleshed freshwater fish are so generous that they hang off the sides of the plate.

From Charlevoix, travel north over the double-leaf bascule drawbridge that goes up and down to let sailing yachts and the Beaver Island ferry travel between Lake Charlevoix and Lake Michigan. Hug the northern edge of Lake Charlevoix and make the 15-minute drive to Horton Bay, a once-bustling lumbering community turned wee seasonal hamlet. Together with Walloon Lake, Horton Bay is best known as the childhood stomping grounds of Ernest Hemingway, and the general store he mentions in his short stories, “Up in Michigan” and “The Last Good Country,” is still selling nightcrawlers today.

New owners have given the timeless shop a whitewashed makeover, decluttering the space without spoiling its historic bones. The original, 150-year-old bakery case displays locally loved cinnamon rolls and sandwiches made on Crooked Tree Breadworks baguettes. Elevated picnic supplies, including Petoskey’s Crow and Moss chocolate and cherry tomatoes from a nearby organic farm, are displayed on carefully curated antiques true to the original period of the shop.

While countless things grow well in the Great Lakes region, fruit remains the area’s most celebrated crop and American Spoon has been preserving and packing that origin story since long before it was in vogue to do so. Founded by Justin Rashid and chef Larry Forgione (who first met when the chef was in search of morel mushrooms for his Brooklyn menu), this Petoskey business has been navigating Michigan’s microseasons for more than 40 years.

The company, now run by Justin’s son Noah, operates a small handful of charming, checkerboard-floored shops today. American Spoon’s retail location in Petoskey was the family’s original preserving kitchen—where an employee named Midge stirred Early Glow strawberries, sour cherries, or Harlayne apricots with a long wooden paddle until they shimmered. Today, the star of the show remains the fruit preserves, which are still made in copper kettles, 60 jars at a time. Don’t leave without their sublime sour cherry preserves, which, in a region now flooded with such edible souvenirs, nails the balance between tart and sweet.

At the northern end of Michigan’s most famed “Tunnel of Trees,” perched on a bluff above the straits where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet, is the Legs Inn—equal parts Odawa-built cabin, wood carver’s museum, and Polish dining hall. Stanley Smolak, who was born in Kamionka, Poland, first settled in Cross Village (wintertime population 93) in the 1920s, working with Odawa laborers soon thereafter to build the stone and log restaurant.

Smolak was an artist, specifically a wood carver, and handmade the vast majority of the totem poles, wooden tables, and chairs that remain inside this sprawling restaurant. “Stanley used to roam the forests and physically tie limbs of trees and bushes so that they would grow together to form a stronger set of twisted table legs,” says Stanley’s great nephew Mark Smolak, who co-owns the restaurant with his brother Chris.

Don’t miss the three bars, each carved from massive single hemlock trees, or the curved tower with a chief’s face on both sides, which Smolak apparently made to serve as his own coffin. Entering the Legs Inn can feel like walking into a boisterous family gathering, the kind where a spontaneous, last-minute invite garnered an unexpected crowd. Lean into that. Chat with friendly, Midwestern strangers. And then find your way to your handcarved table for kabanosy, bigos, pierogi, gołąbki, kielbasa, or a sampler platter that includes a trio of these.

Originally filled with beef, potato, and rutabaga, pasties hail from Cornwall, England, but were adopted by miners during the U.P.’s iron and copper mining booms in such staunch numbers that you seemingly cannot drive more than a few miles on this stretch of Michigan that touches Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Superior without seeing another sign for them. Lehto’s, located just 10 minutes west of the Michty Mac, as the bridge is called, has been selling the original hand-held miners lunch to leery first-timers and devoted locals since 1947.

“Our pasty is delicious, but when you combine it with entering an 80-year-old building, the same smells coming from the kitchen, and the same menu your great grandfather had, it is more akin to eating a memory rather than just another pasty,” third-generation Max Walker says. The menu at his original location is concise, offering the original family recipe for a beef pasty, the option of gravy (admittedly sold only for tourists from below the bridge), and a drink.