Petoskey — There’s a reason why, every summer, desperate residents from the south flee the wretched concrete beaches of Chicago and overcrowded pools of everywhere else to come to places like Frankfort, Petoskey, Charlevoix, and Glen Arbor. But as nice as these Up North beaches are, they aren’t like the beaches in the U.P.
The distance between the beach in Petoskey and a beach on the southern side of the U.P. is only 50 miles. The variance in summer temperatures is negligible. As I’m writing this, it’s 64 degrees in Petoskey and 62 degrees in Au Train, a beautiful little place with a lovely beach right on Lake Superior.
The weather is the same, the sand is the same, and the freshwater is the same. So what makes the U.P. beaches so much better?
There isn’t anyone there.
You’re never sitting in your car, outside the state park, waiting to be let in because the lot is full. You’re never parking three blocks away and then lugging your beach gear alongside the road like some tired vagabond. You’re never packed in on the shore with the rest of the “leisurely” beachgoers, suffering bad music from a bluetooth speaker seven feet to your left while trying to enjoy some peace and quiet.
U.P. beaches are the quiet that Up North beaches wish they were. Long, deep sandy shores. People spread out as far as they want. A group of 10 more than 300 feet away and nothing between you and them. In the other direction, in the middle distance, a family with a couple kids. A smattering of 20 or 30 people in bathing suits, all spread out enough so that no one can hear anyone else’s conversation.
In the Lower Peninsula, 99% of public beaches are part of a state park, county park, or some other local municipal park. There are parking lots, signs with rules, bathrooms, and often concession stands. Yes, these things do exist at some beaches in the U.P., but not the majority of them.
The majority of the beaches in the U.P.—and the best beaches in the U.P.—are basically just places along the side of the road. There will usually be a slightly bigger shoulder with some gravel and then a little path through shallow woods or dune grass. Often, these places on the side of the road come in constellations. Ten little gravel pull-offs like this, all half a mile apart or so.
Right along US-2, near Dune Shores Resort, there’s a stretch of quintessential U.P. beach. Right there, on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, is perhaps more beautiful than any beach in the Lower Peninsula. There are no signs, no markings, and no official designations of anything at all. No sign anywhere tells you that this is a beach.
You just pull off onto the side of the road wherever you want and head down to the water. Cars are always parked along the road there, yet it’s never busy. You can have 500 feet of beach just to yourself on the busiest day of the year along US-2.
And that beautiful beach is essentially the most accessible U.P. beach. That strip of shore is the most southern and most nearest to the bridge. The farther you head north, the more secluded, private, wild, and free the beaches become.
The beaches around Au Train and Rock River are also, without question, some of the nicest in Michigan. The view of Au Train Island hovering over the blue water of Lake Superior, nothing but trees along the shore, is sublime. The beaches up in the Keweenaw are more remote in every way. More free, more empty, more distant, more quiet, more beautiful. Yes, of course, the biting flies are a problem.
Where there are fewer people there are more bugs. But those annoying little menaces that buzz around your knees, biting at your skin for seemingly no reason at all, go away eventually, and the beach is yours.
It’s an easy feeling going to the beach up there. It feels like you aren’t on a tourist track or in the settled world of vacationers. Instead it feels like you are exploring the land and just swimming where you want, the way we used to before we built our very organized modern civilization. In all its glorious emptiness, it feels as though any beach in the U.P. could, very well, become some kind of impromptu nude beach, if we were moved to make it so.
There’s just so much room, so much sand, and so few people to lie on it. Up there, you feel like you own the place, like the world is yours. In the Lower Peninsula, you need a ton of money to have your own private beach. But in the U.P., everyone can have their own private beach. For a few hours at least.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
