The dune coast north to Mackinac
The Lake Michigan shore, from the dune coast to the Straits. Holland (KBIV) sits beside Big Red, the 1907 harbor light, with the Saugatuck dunes just south. North to Traverse City (KTVC): Sleeping Bear's 450-foot freshwater dunes dropping straight into the lake, the Manitou Islands offshore, and Old Mission Peninsula's cherry orchards; Michigan grows about three-quarters of America's tart cherries, most of them right here, and the peninsulas go white with blossom in mid-May. End at Mackinac Island (KMCD), which banned automobiles in 1898 and never lifted it; landing there is the rare arrival a car cannot make. The five-mile Mackinac Bridge threads the Straits on 552-foot towers, and forty miles north the Soo Locks lift Great Lakes freighters the 21 feet between Superior and Huron.