Traverse City & Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI

Our Shipshewana stop for RV repairs ate into our planned time in Traverse City, so we decided to drive up on Friday after work to at least save our weekend days. Thank goodness we did because on the following weekend Michigan was smothered by smoke from the Minnesota and Ontario wildfires.

We chose to stay at the Northwest Michigan Fairgrounds campground because the state and national park campgrounds in this area have poor cell signal and are too wooded for Starlink. We had water and electric hookups, and it was much more affordable than the private RV parks in this popular summer vacation destination. Plus, apparently no one else wanted to be there, so when we needed to be flexible with our plans it wasn’t a problem.

This region is famous for its cherries. They even hold the world record for making the largest cherry pie, weighing over 28,000lbs!

On Saturday morning, we caught the final day of the 100th Annual Cherry Festival and parade.

And checked out some of TC’s beaches on the beautiful Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan.

That afternoon we took a drive up the Leelanau Peninsula on the scenic M-22.

We walked around the town of Suttons Bay and tried some local wine.

We spent Sunday at nearby Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. These remarkable dunes rise 450 ft above Lake Michigan and are named after an Indigenous story about a mother bear, the big dune on shore, and her two cubs who drowned swimming across the lake and became the Manitou Islands.

We hiked the Empire Bluff and the Sleeping Bear Point trails. We started the Dune Climb, but couldn’t finish because the sand was burning our feet. If you want to hike that one, do it first thing in the morning.

Afterward, we continued north to visit Fishtown in Leland. It is one of the last commercial fishing ports operating in Michigan, with historic buildings and boats still intact.

On our way back to the campground, we had ice cream at Moomers.

Later that week, the wildfire smoke blew in, and we had to make some decisions. Our next destination was in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where the air quality was even worse than TC. So we adjusted our plans, which included Michael changing his flight for a work trip and me changing our campground reservations.

Another week later, the air was clear, and we finally made it to the UP!