Atlas Obscura Itineraries

The Explorer’s Guide to Road Tripping Around the Great Lakes

While it might not be the first place that comes to mind when asked about bucket-list destinations, northern Michigan is no stranger to visitors. In-the-know “resorters”—as seasonal residents were called at the turn of the last century—have been flocking to this bucolic, rural region to escape the summertime heat of Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Fort Wayne, and other Midwestern cities for generations. Part of the allure of any trip “Up North,” as the northern swath of Michigan’s lower peninsula is known, is to retreat to a bygone era long before cell phones and laptops—a time when the lakeside communities that sit near the 45th parallel halfway between the equator and the North Pole were mining for copper or iron, a time when those wealthy resorters arrived by steamship, train, or Model T. Just as those early travelers were escaping the heat, modern visitors deserve to escape hustle, and there is no better place to do so than certain iconic, nostalgia-steeped stops that remain suspended in time. That includes a fifth-generation fishing shanty where you can grab smoked whitefish to take home, the still-operating printing press of a beloved mid-century nature artist, and a lakeside cabin that’s served a Polish immigrant’s family recipes for 100 years.