Ludington, MI
Mason County Airport sits five miles east of Ludington on a low rise above the Pere Marquette River. Ludington itself is a Lake Michigan port town — the western terminus of the SS Badger, the last coal-fired passenger steamship operating in the United States. The Badger has crossed Lake Michigan from Ludington to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, twice daily May through October since 1953; she is 410 feet long, carries 600 passengers and 180 vehicles per crossing, burns 50 tons of coal per round trip, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, two miles south of the Badger dock, is a 1,872-megawatt pumped-storage hydroelectric station built into the Lake Michigan bluff — the second-largest in the world by reservoir size. At off-peak hours it pumps Lake Michigan water uphill into a 27-billion-gallon reservoir; during peak demand it releases the water back through six reversible turbines.
The SS Badger is the last coal-fired passenger steamship in regular service in the United States. Launched 1952 by the Christy Corporation in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, she was built to haul railroad freight cars across Lake Michigan — the Pere Marquette Railway and successors operated her for that purpose until 1990. She was converted in 1991 to a passenger and auto ferry by the Lake Michigan Carferry Service, and has crossed daily May through October ever since, Ludington to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on a 4-hour run. 410 feet long, 60 feet beam, displacement 4,244 tons. Crossing capacity 600 passengers, 180 vehicles. The Badger burns roughly 50 tons of coal per round trip in her four Skinner Unaflow steam engines, generating 7,000 horsepower. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
A 35-mile stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline with 450-foot sand dunes — among the largest freshwater dunes in the world. Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive winds through the dunes; from the air, you see the dunes drop dramatically to Lake Michigan, with the Manitou Islands offshore. Native Anishinaabe legend tells of a mother bear and two cubs who swam across Lake Michigan to escape a forest fire — the cubs drowned and became the islands; the exhausted mother climbed the dune to wait, becoming the "Sleeping Bear" mound. Voted America's Most Beautiful Place. Fall color in October is unforgettable.
The Door Peninsula juts 70 miles into Lake Michigan, separating the lake from Green Bay — a slim finger of limestone bluffs, orchards, fishing villages, and more lighthouses than any other county in the country. It's the Midwest's answer to Cape Cod: cherry orchards, white clapboard towns, art galleries, and the traditional Door County fish boil. The name is ominous — the strait at the tip, between the peninsula and Washington Island, is "Porte des Morts," Death's Door, named for the canoes and ships lost in its currents. At Cave Point, Lake Michigan has carved the dolomite shoreline into sea caves and ledges where the waves boom. The bluffs at Eagle Bluff and Peninsula State Park give the whole peninsula its spine.
Northern Michigan grows 75% of America's tart cherries. Old Mission Peninsula — a slim 18-mile finger of land splitting Grand Traverse Bay — is covered in cherry orchards and increasingly Riesling vineyards. From the air in mid-May, the white cherry blossoms turn the entire peninsula white as if it had snowed. The 45th Parallel runs straight through Old Mission — the same latitude as Bordeaux and the Italian Piedmont, which is why the wine works here. The Mission Point Lighthouse (1870) sits at the peninsula's tip.