Time Traveling

Don’t bother to pack the dinner jacket for this vacation, but don’t forget your sneakers. While the Little Traverse Bay area of Michigan—the ring finger’s tip on the mitten-shaped segment of the state map—boasts its share of posh resorts and fine-dining venues, the lure of this popular vacation destination is in seeing rather than being seen.

Actually, make that doing—this is not a place for lounge lizards. “We set the stage, then you’re the actor,” says Peter Fitzsimons, executive director of the Petoskey–Harbor Springs–Boyne Country Visitors Bureau.

All the towns along the bay—Charlevoix, Bay Harbor, Horton Bay, Petoskey, and Harbor Springs—provide the props: golf courses galore; salmon, bass, walleye, and the locally revered whitefish to catch; ski resorts boasting hills for every skill level; nature preserves veined with hiking trails; and a beautiful, twenty-six–mile, blessedly flat bike path that winds between the deep, blue bay and autumn’s blinding maples. But each town also offers a little something special along the way, from specialty shops—you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Gap or Starbucks—to Ernest Hemingway hideouts just waiting to be found.

Charlevoix
The first stop on the trek around the bay, Charlevoix is a harbor town of 5,500, sliced in half by the Pine River Channel, which leads from Lake Charlevoix to Lake Michigan. Scores of squat, Hobbitlike stone houses with cedar shake roofs dot the town, each home a little different from its neighbor. Designed by Earl Young, the town’s Frank Gehry, the homes act as conversation pieces for visitors wending their way through town. Continuing the stone-built theme is Castle Farms, a faux French Renaissance castle built by Albert Loeb, the scion behind Sears, Roebuck. Today it welcomes visitors touring its halls and picnicking in its formal gardens. If you prefer food over fanciful architecture, stroll down Main Street—planted with perky petunias from one end to the other. Stop for a lunch of local whitefish chowder at Weathervane, a former mill (a mammoth fireplace with its  nine-ton keystone glacial boulder is the giveaway) that was converted to a restaurant by—who else?—Earl Young.  Finish up across the street at Murdick’s Fudge Shoppe or savor an espresso at nearby Woolly Bugger while you dither over which yacht to rent at the office next door. Castle Farms, 231-237-0884; Weathervane, 231-547-4311; Murdick’s, 231-547-4213; Woolly Bugger, 231-237-0740

Bay Harbor
Swoop into Bay Harbor, just up the road, in time for sunset. The luxe but laidback Inn at Bay Harbor earns top billing for the evening’s entertainment. After a sip of something special in the South American Lounge, designed with the old-school charm of its namesake Great Lakes cruise ship, indulge in a game of lawn chess before ambling down the road to Latitude, a swish, contemporary dockside restaurant where seafood rules, sushi to skate wing. The next morning, awake to the inn’s lemon soufflé pancakes—a must for breakfast. Justify them as fuel, not simply fancy calories, because the inn’s guest privileges—boating at the nearby yacht club, horseback riding at the equestrian center, golfing, scouring the shoreline before a dip in the pool—will leave no muscle untoned. Then it’s time to head inland, over the green hills to the Inn’s sister resorts, the classic Boyne Highlands and newer Boyne Mountain, complete with the Solace Spa and Avalanche Bay Indoor Waterpark. And don’t forget the bike trails and seemingly countless ski lifts. Inn at Bay Harbor, 231-439-4000; Latitude, 231-439-2750 ; Boyne resorts, 800-462-6963, boyne.com, avalanchebay.com