Michigan is a quintessential summer vacation spot with lakes, farmers markets and sand dunes. With so many adorable towns to explore, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve done two weekend trips to Michigan: One to Detroit and one to South West Michigan, along the lake! While we know we have more to explore – here is some info about some great weekend trip idea!
South West Michigan
For our trip to South West Michigan, we based ourselves in Holland over the labor day weekend. Visiting Michigan in the summer is expensive and nice places can book up super far in advance because so many people like to spend time on Lake Michigan in the beautiful summer months. We planned this trip at the last minute, and choose Holland because it was centrally located, had activities we wanted to do, and we had some hotel points to use. I wouldn’t say Holland is exceptionally charming or anything (at least in the hotel district) but it made for a nice base to explore. We want to go back to this area again, because we had some kind of silly mishaps that make us want a little bit of a do-over, but even still, had a great time!
Here is what we got up to!
Day 1
Up early to explore the Holland Farmers Market – which is located in downtown Holland on 8th street. It is open 8-2 on Saturdays. It was a great outdoor market with some live music, lots of amazing vendors with art and food to try and was very crowded. We got a few goodies to take with us!
Next, we drove to the Outdoor Discovery Center – which is a free activity for the family, about 10 minutes outside Holland and is closed Sundays, but open 10-3 Saturday (9-4 other days). This ended up being better than we expected! They have a nice little visitor center with some animals, and lots of nice walking paths. There were beautiful gardens, playgrounds and even some animal exhibits – like a variety of birds. We picked a path to hike on for about 45 minutes, then enjoyed the playground.
After that, we headed about 15 minutes south where there are a ton of different places to stop offering wines, fruit stands, farms and more. We visited a few, including Virtue Cider and Modales Wines (both for some take away goodies) and then ended at Cranes Pie Pantry Restaurant. This restaurant was super busy! We put our name in and then checked out the shop on site. They had ciders, donuts, pie (obviously) and more! We got lunch there and we were all really happy with our meals – it’s a really cute place and the food was great. We ordered a pie and cider to go!
Our next stop was downtown Saugatuck. To be honest – we had hoped to go to Oval Beach, which looks amazing from the pictures. However, we got stuck in a super long line of traffic, made it all the way to the end and then were told the lot was full. It was a bit frustrating, and we probably should have planned better and went first thing in the morning! Instead we ended up at a really nice little park by the lake, and enjoyed relaxing and eating our pie, before checking out some of the stores in the area. Really cute downtown – if we could have stayed here, we would have! Would have also saved us some more traffic and terrible parking options driving around! Super, super crowded. We were not here around a mealtime, but there were tons of cute restaurants; we had written down Wally’s, Mitten Brewing and BARge as options.
Our main event for the day though was a Dune Buggy Ride by Saugatuck Dune Rides. This was SO fun and a must do if you’re in the area. Buy your tickets ahead of time online – they cost $27/adult and $15 for kids under 11. The whole activity was about an hour. They took you out on this giant dune buggy – I think it fit about 16 people. They took you to the top of the dunes with amazing views of the lake, across the dunes (wild!) and into the forest. We learned a lot about the area and the dunes themselves while also having a ton of fun. They stopped a few times for you to take pictures as well.
Afterward, we made the bad decision to try Oval Beach one more time. Waited in more traffic, but this time made it in. Although, we didn’t realize it cost money to park – something like $25 or more, and we had only planned to stay for an hour or so this late in the evening, so we bailed and turned around. Mission failed.
Instead – we took the kids to go go-karting and they had fun with that. Picked up some takeout tacos from Tacos Borre on the way back to the hotel.
Day 2
This morning, we decided to head straight to the beach so we wouldn’t get stuck not getting in! We made it there early (maybe 9am) and still had tons of parking. This time we tried Ottawa Beach which is closer to Holland. It was a really huge beach with tons of places to lay out, a nice lighthouse and beautiful lake access. Somehow though – luck wasn’t with us again today. It was SO windy. Like – red flag, can’t swim in the lake windy. No idea how often this happens, but it was kind of funny. We decided to park and head to the beach anyway – it wasn’t super warm to begin with, so we figured we would lay in the sun and take in the lake views. But – laying down wasn’t super fun either because you were basically just being smacked in the face by sand and almost immediately our blanket was covered 😀 We made the most of it though, walking along the lake and enjoying the views for a bit.
On the drive back to the hotel – we stopped at Bowerman Blueberries Farm Market – there are so many of these farm markets around – and that’s what we loved so much about this area. We picked up too many things to take home, including granola, a donut for a snack, a candle and more!
For lunch, we headed to downtown Holland and ate at Bowerman’s on 8th. The food was delicious! We had planned to go to the Windmill Restaurant but it had a long wait. Lots of places to eat in this area, so we walked until we found something, which we happened to love!
In the downtown area, there’s a nice playscape-playground near the water that we walked to, and did a little shopping and almost bought some wooden clogs.
We had seen some hiking trails during our drive in the morning and made our way back to a hike called Riley Trails Loop. It was an easy 3.4 mile hike and was pretty – with hardly anyone else there.
Finally, we made our way to one more beach – Tunnel Beach. This beach actually has a tunnel built through the sand dunes for you to walk through. You have to walk up a lot of stairs to get to the overlook, and then down a bunch more stairs to the beach. It was crowded, despite it still being SO windy. Gorgeous beach though, although we didn’t stay because… wind.
One of the highlights though was going back to Ottawa Beach for sunset. We made it just in time and had such a beautiful setting for a gorgeous sunset. Then hopped over to Captain Sundae for some delicious ice cream.
Day 3
On our final day, we made a quick stop in the super cute town of South Haven. We got some coffee from the Flying Saucer and then drove down to check out the beach there – also really nice. This is another cute town that we would choose to stay in if we had an opportunity.
While in the area, Holland has a lot of fun activities that we opted out of, thinking out kids were probably too old to enjoy. But – there’s the Windmill Gardens and Nelis’ Dutch Village as well. Overall, so many charming towns in Southern Michigan and so many things to do for families.
Detroit
In Detroit – we only had time to do just a few quick things, so we’d like to go back and explore more. We went to a Piston’s Game, The Henry Ford Museum and checked out a cute market while there.
Let me know your favorite stops in Michigan!
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