y Larry Olmsted, Special for USA TODAY
With vast sandy beaches, pristine lakes, quaint villages, some of the nation’s best golf, big-time skiing and snowmobiling, northwest Michigan has long been one of the Midwest’s best-kept secrets — except for Midwesterners themselves and a few others.
“We have so much to offer in such a concentrated region,” says Suzy Voltz, president of Century 21 Sleeping Bear Realty. “Families from southern Michigan who have been coming to their lakefront cottages on weekends for generations, folks from Florida who spend the whole summer playing golf at Crystal Mountain resort. The towns, resorts and lakes are all so different, but all so close.”
Because the east side of Lake Michigan has a granite-based geology, its beaches are sandy, unlike the crushed-seashell beaches on much of the Great Lakes.
This has put towns like Frankfort on the tourism map. Frankfort, which comes alive in summer, sits just south of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, a 35-mile expanse of sand dunes. The coastal resort town is also home to Crystal Downs, a classic Alister MacKenzie-designed private golf course that is the consensus best in the Midwest.
But public golf here is also good. Arcadia Bluffs, on the shore of Lake Michigan, is considered one of the best public and British Isles-style links courses in the nation. Then there is the immensely popular 36-hole Crystal Mountain.
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