Northern Michigan

As a girl who enjoys traveling so much, it always surprises me when some of my best weekends are spent playing tourist in Michigan. For some of the spots I continuously visit, I am going to try and come back and edit posts to include new spots I have tried. Hopefully, this will be a continuous edit of all the amazing times I have in Northern Michigan.

For my mom’s 50th birthday in April, she naturally wanted to go to… a water park, haha! She likes to say she is 18 with 32 years of experience and my goodness the woman has not slowed down yet so I believe her. The Great Wolf Lodge up in Traverse City seemed to be a good fit, however I wanted to still have adult time and sightseeing without always being surrounded by screaming wet children, those days will come for me eventually. We decided instead to do some touristing plus a half day evening pass at Avalanche Bay, Boyne’s waterpark.

As we are avid skiers/snowboarders, we are growing familiar with the town of Petoskey as it the halfway point between Boyne Mountain and Boyne Highlands. Usually, we spend a long day on the slopes and then my dad drives full speed straight to the Polish Kitchen which will never disappoint you or leave you hungry. Since that is a little further north, we decided instead to try out downtown Petoskey. 

We chose City Park Grill as it has live music on the weekends starting at 10pm. It was pretty good food, nothing extremely special, but having a table for when the music started was a good idea. We learned quick there’s not much action in downtown Petoskey so if you have a seat stay in it.

I much preferred our stop at Pour, my ideal place. A super trendy cocktail/wine bar with an Asian fusion menu and comfortable classy seating. (me+sushi+wine=bliss)

Other amazing stops were Petoskey Farms Vineyard and Brewery -view explains it all:

And my new hidden favorite gem, Barrel Back right on Walloon Lake. The food and location here was amazing with nearly every seat in the place having lake views.

Traverse City: 

My husband and I had the best time together on a December ski trip gone warm, which left us exploring wineries and Traverse City, and then just two weekends ago we did a couples weekend with our core group of 8 during cherry fest.

Hotel: The West Bay Beach Holiday Inn Resort was a ton of fun for our group to stay at. They have a really fun outdoor area right on the water where they had live music and the walk into downtown traverse is short and easy.

We enjoyed some great lunch on the rooftop patio of The Franklin right downtown which I would recommend:

Another light, upbeat option our group enjoyed was the Little Fleet Bar parking lot of food trucks. This was nice for everyone to split up and grab grub/drink of choice and relax on the picnic tables with everything from BBQ/pizza/grilled cheeses/sushi rolls (of course me)/specialty tacos

Keeping to the math I discussed earlier about me and sushi and wine… I obviously loved Red Ginger also right in downtown Traverse. This is a nice place for a more dressed up pan asian meal, and their 3 roll chef special sushi platter for $38 was delicious.

Continuing a more low key classy night, Low Bar is an intimate and dark speakeasy below 7 monks taproom that serves up excellent cocktails. Our husbands also enjoyed Nolan’s Cigar bar for some man time while us girls turned the hotel’s not so busy dance club into our own scene from Sex & the City.

My husband missed his seafood pick of Traverse, Apache Trout Grill, which we both enjoyed the last time we were in town. We found this to be a much better option in terms of price and quantity of food than the Boathouse restaurant up in the Peninsula. On Friday and Saturday nights Apache has crab and crab/prime rib specials that made my husband drool.

Wineries we have been to (all on old mission):

• Chateau Grand Traverse (amazing views of the entire peninsula)
• Brys Estate
• Bonobo Winery (love the inside of this place)
• Bowers Harbor (some of my favorite wine, such warm employees)
• 2 Lads Winery (great views, hip place, good sparkling wines)

Fun group activity:

We did a 3 hour tubing trip down the Platt River, which was about a 40 minute drive from Traverse. Since there are no ubers in the area, we opted for a private van rental for four hours to shuffle our group of 8 back and forth. The river is wide and beautiful, with an ending right into a bay of Lake Michigan. Price point wise this was about $30/person, with the van rental being an additional $400 plus tip total.

Phew! That is all for now, until next time Northern Michigan 🙂

*please leave me any good recommendations in the comments

❤ Sarah