South of Sleeping Bear

Frankfort, MI Trip + I examine my character flaws

The sun sets over ripples on a sandy beach; I boil water for hot cocoa. To the north, a tall lighthouse catches the orange glow. To the south, sloped sand bluffs curve out of sight. My sisters— I am the oldest of four— and I sit on a picnic blanket and talk. It looks like summer, but it isn’t.

It’s late winter or early spring on the West Coast of Michigan (depending of course if you’re a glass half full or half empty kind of person).

The West Coast of Michigan is one of those idyllic summer places with perfect sandy beaches and clear blue water– rivers that look so swimmable they seem made up, beach fires and sand dunes, rolling hills and pretty barns dotting the countryside.

Last week, I spent time back home in Michigan. Most of it I spent with my grandparents at their house in the woods, but some of it I spent on the coast with my sisters on a project with Visit Traverse City. Here’s a little bit about that:

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Arcadia Scenic Turnout along M-22 near Frankfort, Michigan

I drive across the entire Upper Peninsula… again

If you’re new here (and many of you are! hello!) one thing to know about me is that I spend more time in a car than should be humanly possible. Part of that for sure is working as a Midwest travel writer— you’re not exactly going to fly from middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin to middle-of-nowhere Michigan.

My most frequent drive is the one that follows Lake Superior from its western end, where I live, across the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan and down over the Mackinac Bridge toward Traverse City where my grandparents live and my parents have a cottage nearby. It’s not a bad drive really, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it in the early spring¹. It’s been snowstorm after ice storm after snowstorm lately, and it seemed like all of my carefully laid travel plans were consistently foiled and it was back to the drawing board over and over.

I’ve been making the drive across the Upper Peninsula at least twice a year since 2018. Winding along those shores and stopping along the way for a night here and a night there laid the framework for the experiences that eventually became Hello Stranger.

South of Sleeping Bear: Weekend in Frankfort, Michigan

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore gets all the hype when it comes to great hiking near Traverse City, but one thing I’ve learned about hiking is where there’s one great hiking spot, there are usually others.

The stretch of M-22 south of the Sleeping Bear Dunes near Frankfort is definitely an example of this with beautiful dune hikes and views from Green Point Dunes and Arcadia Dunes.

Cozy moments from our Crystal Mountain Cottage

We stayed at Crystal Mountain Resort just outside of Frankfort in a cottage near the ski hill and the cottage was super cozy but we also need to take a moment to rave review The Thistle, the Scottish-themed restaurant. Wildly good food. The truffle fries dipped in appetizer cheese fondue? Winner.

Green Point Dunes, the Waffle Cabin at Crystal Mountain Resort, Stormcloud Brewing in Frankfort

Overall it was a really nice weekend, the sort that made me miss summer viscerally. It was cold out, and my favorite part of the trip was actually the early mornings in the cottage talking over cups of coffee and reading quietly. Maybe that just speaks to how busy I’ve been lately, or maybe I’m just getting old(er) and running out of energy to gogogo all the time on projects like this. Nonetheless, I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to do destination marketing projects like this as part of my job. It’s definitely more work than it seems (by the time it’s all said and done, I’ll have put at least 40 hours into this trip, not counting travel time and only counting time shooting photos/video and on my laptop processing, storyboarding, and editing).

But it’s definitely fun work that I enjoy doing, and how rare is that?

I examine my character flaws :(

A snowstorm kept me in Michigan longer than I expected— my fault for trying to travel across the Upper Peninsula in March. I made it home to Northern Wisconsin later than I meant to and by the time I was back home and done with work for the week (I also work a full time job as an editor at Paddling Magazine) I realized I haven’t had a day off in March at all.

That is 100% my own fault for wanting both a full-time job and to continue freelance marketing work. This month I got a few messages on the internet from other creators/writers along the lines of “how are you managing all that?” and the answer as it turns out is- not well! And I don’t recommend it!!

I came home to a stack of things I had soft-committed too— freelancing projects that I said I was maybe interested in, things I said I’d do to help a friend, nonprofits I said I could probably help with, posts I could maybe make for a small business looking for a boost, a meeting I said I’d try and log on for, a trip I said I might be interested in doing and just… no room left on my plate for the first time in a really long time.

And it’s a really beautiful, wonderful thing to be in demand and to have more opportunities than you can possibly take.

But I am out of space.

And I have so, so much trouble saying no to people, because with so many of these things you’re saying “no, I’m sorry, I cannot help your small business even if you can pay me for my time”, or “no, I’m sorry, I genuinely do not have time to do anything with your nonprofit” and people will always find a way to try and make it work for you and it’s really, really hard to say no when kind people are trying to be flexible with you.

For some reason it feels so crappy to say that I don’t have the time to do something, even when it’s true. You can say your calendar is full, or you don’t have availability but I have trouble finding the words to say that without feeling like I’m letting someone down, and so I end up over-committing then crashing and burning and this is absolutely a character flaw.

Anyways, I’m currently on the tail-end (hopefully) of a little crash and burn moment. Wish me luck in my endeavor to learn how to say no to people.

Other Things To Read:

• Tackling the Chicago Adventure Gap: I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with some folks from Chicago Adventure Therapy and the crew from Black People Outside about the accessibility of adventure in places like Chicago. I learned so much, and I really enjoyed writing this piece.

• The Secret To Making Your Dream Long Paddle Trip Actually Happen: One of the coolest things about my job is interviewing really cool people— Conny just happens to be a friend in real life too! Check out her story on her solo 1200-mile circumnavigation of Lake Superior and read about how big long trips maybe aren’t as far out of reach as you think.

• Do Paddlers Need To Get Burned?: This article is the product of a really cool conversation I had with sea kayak and Greenland rolling coach Tim Gallaway. At a certain level of paddling, it seems like everyone has a horror story from their 2nd or 3rd year on the water. Just how important is getting burned to paddler development?

• Solo Female Road Trip Planning Guide: Personally van life could never be for me— I’m a social creature who loves a home base. A solo weekend-weeklong road trip on the other hand? Nothing beats it.

• My Ultralight Backpacking Crisis: I’ve been daydreaming about cutting a toothbrush in half and 40L backpacks for days. I think maybe it’s a cry for help.

1. Funny enough, one of my favorite camping trips ever in the UP was in March on one of these drives. Andy and I, on the way back from my parents, headed out to a stretch of beach campsites deep in the UP and camped by the water. We had a whole stretch of the Lake to ourselves and read quietly and made burritos over a fire while the sun set. It sleeted after we went to bed and the wind howled but we packed up into a warm car in the morning and got donuts and coffee just a few hours later before heading back to our side of the Lake.