A Long-Weekend in Traverse City: Day-by-day

Camping, wine, and the beach. What could be better? Over Memorial Day Weekend I had just that with a long-weekend of camping with some of my girlfriends.

I personally think we had a perfect schedule for an involved, yet relaxing weekend. Read on to see what we did!

DAY 1:

• Drive up

• Grab drinks and lunch at Taproot in downtown Traverse City

  • If you love hard ciders this is the PLACE. You can get a flight of 4 ciders for $8

  • They’re also a great place to grab lunch with a group as they have vegan and vegetarian options!

• Set up camp

• Campfire + Dinner

  • We wanted an easy dinner for the first night, something to just sit around the fire and enjoy so we went with pizza pudgy pies (or hobo pies) which are the absolute BEST

DAY 2:

• Breakfast at camp

  • We asked everyone to bring their own breakfast foods as we know everyone wakes at various times and likes different things

• Relaxing morning

• Lunch at camp

  • Easy sandwiches were the way to go, some PB & J and a lunch meat and cheese

• Sleeping Bear Dunes

  • For a perfect little day trip we went to:

    • Empire Bluff Trail – a short trail but with awesome views

    • Sleeping Bear Point Trail – another trail that can be long or short based on the direction you follow. We went straight to the beach and sat in the sand and enjoyed the 75 degree sunny weather

• Cookout for dinner

  • At this point in camping we all know what kind of people we are when it comes to cooking. We often have big lofty plans of making all these great meals and then we get lazy and go out to eat. Not wanting to repeat this we only planned one big meal – hot dogs, potato salad, chips, baked beans, the works. Perfect Memorial Day Weekend meal

DAY 3:

• Out to breakfast

  • With the plans for the day we wanted to make sure we had a nice big breakfast

• Wine tasting

  • We had a recommendation from one of the girls in our group to go to Chateau Chantal in Old Mission Peninsula.

    • I highly highly HIGHLY recommend this winery. With amazing views and amazing wine you can’t go wrong.

    • My favorite wines were the Riesling Late Harvest and the Sweet Amour Rose (I loved them so much I bought a bottle of each) – BONUS: for each flight or glass you get you get $3 off each bottle! So save your receipts!

• Late lunch near downtown

  • We grabbed lunch near downtown at Red Mesa. We avoided heading downtown to eat due to how busy it was this weekend. However, after lunch we headed down to shop

• Shopping downtown

  • We wandered downtown, grabbed some free parking (parking is free on Sunday’s!!), and shopped around at all the local shops

DAY 4:

• Pack up camp

  • Check out for most State Parks is 1pm so you have plenty of time but we wanted to get a early start since it’s about 4 hours to get back home

• Grab breakfast to go

  • We stopped at a super cute local coffee shop, Breakaway Cafe, to grab some coffee and a bagel before we headed home

I believe this was a great schedule to have a relaxing weekend, yet still see lots of what Traverse City and NW Michigan has to offer. Let me know in the comments or on Instagram all your favorite things to do, see, places to eat, and good coffee in the Traverse City area!