Vacationland Revisited
Drive time: 1.5 hours Distance: 70 miles
When I was growing up, my family, much like any self-respecting suburban Chicago residents with free time and an I-Pass, would drive to Sawyer, Michigan, an unincorporated village on Lake Michigan, to spend the weekend at our summer house. That home and the one we later purchased in New Buffalo contained every conceivable rustic-chic nautical decoration. Horseshoe crab shells? We got ’em under glass. Framed map of the Great Lakes? You want the famous lighthouses or the famous shipwrecks? Because we got ’em both. French ceramic decorative chickens? Yes, that too. We’re talking high-octane quaint.
The towns that dot Michigan’s southwestern shore are picturesque as hell. Want a few names? Combine a water feature or a type of tree with literally any other word. Three Oaks. Grand Beach. Union Pier. . Quaint!
