CNHI News Service
Although never having lived in Michigan, we have visited on numerous occasions.
For our most recent visit we set out to explore a portion of the state that was mostly new territory — the less-traveled eastern “Sunrise Coast” bordering Lake Huron.
The leisurely drive offered miles of great scenery on uncrowded roads that included stops for picnics, festivals, parades, museums, lighthouses, and small shops. Towns along the coast are of modest size and hotel and dining prices seemed reasonable.
Port Huron was the first night’s destination. The town of 30,000 offers scenic lake views and enjoys four interesting museums including a light ship (a floating lighthouse) and the 1858 Grand Trunk Railway depot where a young Thomas Edison worked selling newspapers to passengers.
The following morning, we enjoyed a scenic 150-mile drive following the lakeshore on the periphery of Michigan’s thumb.
Michigan boasts 128 lighthouses, more than any other state bordering the Great Lakes. Many are open to the public, while others only permit public access to the grounds.
Some lighthouses are privately owned, a few of which operate as bed and breakfasts.
During the drive to Bay City, we visited five lighthouses and enjoyed a picnic lunch at a city park in Port Sanilac.
Our hotel in Bay City was adjacent to a city park fronting the Saginaw River that hosted a free John Denver tribute concert.
The following day’s 130-mile drive to Alpena included one of our most pleasurable stops, the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse.
We spent at least an hour sitting silently on benches watching the boats and birds in one of the most peaceful locations we have visited.
The following day’s 120-mile drive to Cheboygan included a lunch stop in the small lakeshore community of Rogers City where we were surprised to discover we had arrived during the town’s annual Nautical City Festival.
We intended to spend most of a day in Sault Ste Marie, but found motel prices there and in Mackinac City fairly expensive (it was a weekend), so we chose two evenings at a family motel in Cheboygan.
Cheboygan was hosting its annual salmon fishing tournament, an event that worked in our favor when one of the fishing teams staying at the motel left us an ice chest full of salmon fillets to cook on the motel’s gas grill while they were off to down some brews.
The following day’s drive to Sault Ste Marie passed through the small town of Pickford celebrating its annual “Hay Days.” We stopped to take in the amazingly long parade that included tractors, fire trucks, pickup trucks, wreckers, horses, high school alumni floats, and a decorated golf cart driven by two school cafeteria cooks. As the 1964 alumni float passed by one of us yelled “I’m older than you.” A female riding on the float responded with, “Nobody is older than me.”
Starting back south we overnighted in Traverse City, which is an entirely different place than we remembered from our last visit of several decades ago.
The following morning we headed to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, south through Manistee for a night in Grand Rapids where the following morning we visited the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. We have visited a number of presidential museums and they have all been excellent.
Then it was back to Detroit, and a return to the heat and humidity of South Georgia. We anticipated an enjoyable road trip that turned out to be even better than expected.