Vineyards, Orchards and Quaint Villages

Thursday, May 21, 2015--Traverse City Area

There are two peninsulas that jut out to the north of Traverse City.  Each has a roadway designated as a scenic byway.  We spent today exploring those.

M-37 Scenic Byway goes up the Old Mission Peninsula, a very narrow spit of land.  It ends at the Mission Lighthouse.  It is lined with many grand homes--both old and new.  Along the way were several wineries, lots of blossoming cherry trees, and a very interesting Mission General Store to see/visit.  While in the store which sells everyday items for locals but also has lots of unique and interesting items for tourists (such as an old pickle barrel, old-fashioned cake donuts, lots of out-of-date items from far in the past, etc.), the lady asked where we were from and announced, "We have Indiana, Ohio, and Texas here right now!"


M-22 Scenic Byway goes up and down a much broader peninsula to the west of the one above.  The countryside is probably not as scenic and the homes are not as grand as on the other one, but there are a number of really nice villages--Suttons Bay, Northport, Leland, and Glen Arbor.  There were wineries and more cherry orchards along this route, too.

On the western end of M-22 is a cut-off on M-109, another scenic byway, to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  We ate a late picnic lunch there and then did the "Dune Climb."  It's a huge dune that has no vegetation on a wide swath of it.  People climb it, but there's a surprise.  From the parking lot, it doesn't look so high.  But that first part leads to a plateau with another climb behind it which leads to another plateau with a final climb behind it.  We spent about 1 1/2 hours climbing the dune, enjoying the view, and returning back to the bottom of the dune.

By then, it was late afternoon, so we explored one more village--Empire, which is the home of the park.  Then we returned to Traverse City for the evening.