Garden Peninsula, MichiganThe drive: 6 hours The Garden Peninsula, which I discovered on a drive around the Great Lakes nearly 20 years ago, is out of the way even for the Upper Peninsula. Hanging off the bottom of the mother peninsula, it is a 22-mile-long knuckle of land reaching from Michigan toward Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. … Read more
chicago to milwaukeeThe bike ride: 10 hours Friendships are based on two things: common interests and complaining. My friend Patryk excels at the latter. For years, he complained that I never invited him on my long-distance cycling trips around the Midwest. When I asked him to ride with my bike team, he complained about that, … Read more
Port Washington, WisconsinThe drive: 2 hours Port Washington is a place where time stands still — the view from Franklin Street up the hill to St. Mary’s Church always postcard-perfect, the caw of seagulls in the near distance reminding you of vacations gone by. Even the music playing in the boutiques is stuck somewhere in the yacht-rock … Read more
New Buffalo and Three Oaks, MichiganThe drive: 1.5 hours I could tell you that my lifelong besties and I make an annual pilgrimage to southwest Michigan’s Harbor Country for the sunsets, which turn the sky and lake into a painter’s palette of lavender and saffron and indigo and invite us to contemplate the fleeting nature of … Read more
Sheboygan, WisconsinThe drive: 2.5 hours Sheboygan has long been known as the home of the bratwurst (and more recently as the go-to spot for Vera Pizza Napoletana–certified wood-fired pizzas at one of my favorite restaurants, Il Ritrovo). But what I love most about this small city halfway between Milwaukee and Green Bay is its lesser-known … Read more
Around the lakeThe trip: 7 nights When my husband, Kurt, and I bought a 2004 Chevy Astro conversion van with two bucket seats and a convertible bed, we envisioned a future filled with epic road trips launched from the curb in front of our home. For starters, we decided to take on the Lake Michigan … Read more
Muskegon, MichiganThe drive: 3.5 hours I’ve been obsessed with ships for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Iowa, and the largest body of water I saw as a kid wasn’t big enough for more than a rowboat. Even now, I still geek out over just about anything that … Read more
Indiana Dunes National ParkThe drive: 1 hour Indiana Dunes National Park is a Rust Belt kind of wild space: understated but beautiful, a lonely stretch of delicately brown, grassy sand dunes that overlook a lakefront distant from the Chicago skyline visible, in miniature, across the way. But that’s not what pulls me there. Behind those … Read more
“If there is redemption, it is that I am alive and writing.”
