Turn your Lake Michigan beach vacation into a full-fledged road trip. Encircle Lake Michigan on a 1,000-mile jaunt and stay near public beaches in all four states that border the lake. Lake Michigan, 300 miles long and more than 100 miles wide, is the only Great Lake completely in the United States. Dozens of resort towns and hundreds of public beaches are located along the route.
Start the journey in the south parking lot of North Beach in Chicago. Belmont Harbor, at the midpoint of the beach, is one of the largest “parking lots” for sailboats in North America. Between Lakeshore Drive and the nearby Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue, a variety of hotels offer lodging.
Just 40 miles north, Illinois State Beach, the second largest Lake Michigan public beach in Illinois, is surrounded by lodging, rental cabins and bed and breakfasts inns in the beach town of Zion.
Vacation rental cabins, inns and motels virtually line the route along much of the 200 miles of Wisconsin lakeshore between the Illinois and Michigan state lines. Mostly local-oriented beaches are south of Milwaukee, but travelers will find additional vacation destinations on the beaches north of Milwaukee toward Green Bay.
A favorite beach vacation destination is Wisconsin's Door County on the peninsula northeast of Green Bay. Across the Green Bay from Door County, vacation beaches stretch its length along the North Bay Shore Recreation area.
Glaciers, violent winter storms and rugged wave action reduced beaches to west-facing shores of spits and peninsulas between Escanaba and St. Ignace on the Upper Peninsula. Rocky lakeshore, thick forests and glacier-carved inland lakes are split by U.S. 2 along the south shore. Visitors can find motels in the small towns along the route, as well as inns and vacation rental cabins on U.S. 2. Public beaches with frigid lake water are located east of Escanaba on Michigan Route 183 on the peninsula to Garden and Fairport.
Western Michigan, the Lake's east shore, has the widest variety of public beach vacation spots. Between the Mackinac Straits Bridge and the Indiana state line, full-service resorts and hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns and vacation rental cabins are located in nearly every town along that 400-mile stretch of the road trip. Public beaches are found at Wilderness State Park near Mackinaw City, Fisherman's Island State Park at Charlevoix, on both the Lake and inland sides of the “thumb” at Traverse Bay and south of Manistee.
On nearly half of this section of the road trip, from Ludington to the Indiana state line, visitors will see the world’s largest and tallest freshwater dunes. More than a dozen state parks and almost double that number of city parks provide public beach access to Lake Michigan. A variety of lodging choices are located in the many beach towns along this route.
Stretching 20 miles from Michigan City to Gary, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Indiana Dunes State Park provide vacation access to towering sand dunes, sandy beaches and natural areas that preserve the four steps of dune creation and nature’s own restoration process. Vacation lodging is located in and around Michigan City, Beverly Shores and the casino area in Gary. Vacation rental cabins and bed and breakfast inns are also located in smaller towns in this area.
