Michigan adventures

Fifty summers ago, my family began making an annual summer trip to two Michigan locations: a relative’s house near Traverse City, and a cottage near South Haven, owned by family friends. 

I’m a big fan of Michigan’s shoreline and I really miss it. 

My family first visited this area in 1973, when my grandfather Bill Romey remarried and his new wife Dodie owned a cottage near Traverse City. At the same time, our family friends bought an A-frame in Glenn, near South Haven, about a 2-hour drive from downtown Chicago. We then began visiting both places every summer. 

Every June or July, my mother and I would travel from Evansville to South Haven. We’d spend a few days at the lively South Haven place, then head north for the remainder of our time. 

Northport Point is an exclusive area in Leelanau County, on Northport and Traverse Bays. The affluent sliver is home to old money families, with names like Ford and Bunn, near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Summers in the northernmost part of Michigan’s lower peninsula could at times be downright cold. It didn’t matter much; everything there has a rarefied crispness — the air, water, sky. If on occasion the high was only going to be 61, we still had fun at a movie, hanging on the porch or playing cards.

My step-grandmother Dodie was my grandmom for all intents and purposes, since I was so young when Grandmother Grace died. Dodie’s family had owned their stunning Northport Point cabin (larger than the house I grew up in – and then some) since the 1930s. 

We were civilians up there, and we knew it. Invited into that world via their marital union, we were never “inside” and therefore never fully acknowledged by Regulars. I recall being about 11 and appearing for a group golf or tennis lesson, always under a cloud of suspicion from the other young students. Still, I got what I wanted out of those sessions. 

And my siblings, older than I, once took part in an organized sailing class during which they were hassled and ridiculed by the teenaged elitist “Pointsters” — as we liked to call them — who tried to capsize the Sunfish they were sailing in together. 

That’s just one facet of our time surrounding Northport Point. All in all, I loved it and the story does get better. Happily, I roamed the quiet roads and paths of NPP on foot, cycling, and later, golf carts.

By contrast, South Haven and nearby Glenn were accessible and ever-welcoming — with their sun and sandy public beaches — and because the other family had three boys. 

Located in the southwestern corner of the state on Lake Michigan, the town has two huge public beaches and its centerpiece is a functioning lighthouse built in 1903. That’s a popular tourist destination, as are most lighthouses in the Great Lakes. Nearby tourist destinations included New Buffalo and Saugatuck, an artist colony. We spent a lot of time on the water, grilling and having beach bonfires and setting off fireworks. 

At Glenn, our friends’ parents and mine had been collegiate besties. Their three sons and our three kids matched closely in ages, so the southern leg of the trip was always a blast. Our friends’ cottage was located on a dune 130 feet above the Lake Michigan shore in a wooded area.

As I got older, all of the siblings and I began to do more independent activities on vacation, as we were now teenagers who could drive on Red Arrow and Blue Star highways, had some money to spend in town, and so on.

The summer of 1982 was especially memorable for me, Cynthia, and Woody, as we three siblings all graduated – me from high school, Cynthia from IU, and Woody from Harvard Business School. All during that vacation, my brother’s HBS friend Carl drove us around northern Michigan on M22 in his Trans Am and we visited Leelanau, Leland, Northport, Omena, Sutton’s Bay and Traverse.

That was also the summer when I first met Tina, a close friend from Houston whom we still keep in touch with. Many great memories of the time we spent together in the following summers.

Although my penultimate Northport Point summer would have been about 1985, my junior collegiate year, the emphasis turned inevitably toward South Haven as my main friend Rob was also a fraternity brother and a sometime college roommate. We’d knock off for the weekend and head up to South Haven, reachable within a few hours’ drive from IU.

There is where I was able to meet up with “Rob No. 2,” and later on, Cathy —a great (and lifelong) friend with awesome music knowledge a few years younger. This group spent many happy hours (literally) at The Idler, an 1890s riverboat converted into a bar, and at the drawbridge bar Captain Lou’s, which came along later.

One of the greatest aspects of those Michigan summers was how the state’s position in the Eastern Time Zone meant daylight stretched well past 10 p.m. This gift of extended light was perfect for our evening beach fires in Glenn. My friends and I would spend the entire afternoon at the beach, go up for dinner and still have plenty of light to build a bonfire on the shore.

During the relatively brief time I lived in Chicago (1986-1995), I was often able to get over to Michigan. After we met, Christi and I made a point to go over in wintertime, when the tourists were absent and you’d feel as though you had the entire place to yourself. Christi has family roots in the state with her mother hailing from Port Huron and dad from Flint. Relatives today are sprinkled throughout the eastern and northeastern parts of the state. 

Among all-time highlights in young adult years, Christi and I rented for a full week two years’ running with Greg and Mireille, and spent time there with Cath and Chuck, and with Jeff and Cindy.

Later, our friends David and Mika took us to their family’s getaway home near Leland, and close friends Brent and Maria, whom we first introduced South Haven to, actually purchased and ran a bed and breakfast there for a over a decade. 

Between 2009-2012, fellow Indiana FIJIs (and actual brothers) Don and David and I would cycle the Apple Cider Century, a hundred-miler held in late September from New Buffalo. Great fun, stunning sights and almost always, crisp Fall weather.

Christi and I last were in South Haven together with the boys in 2014. That’s been a long stretch and we need to end that “no-Michigan” streak. (This is underway for Summer 2025!)

I was able to get back to Northport Point one final time. On a chilly, clear October 1994 morning (not unlike the one in this YouTube – go to 1:29:00 or so), Christi and I stopped my Jeep Wrangler at the guard house and were waved in to see Dodie’s cottage one last time before she left for her winter destination in Florida. I remember feeling wetness in my eyes as we left Dodie and the house, unsure if it was due to the brisk temperature that Sunday morning or something else.