Cherries explain Traverse City. The sandy soil and the moderating influence of Grand Traverse Bay, which keeps late frosts at bay, make this corner of Michigan the biggest tart-cherry producer in the country, and the town holds a National Cherry Festival each July with parades, pies and fireworks. In May the orchards on the hills blossom white, and by mid-summer the roadside stands are heaped with red fruit. More recently the same climate has produced a flourishing wine country, with vineyards on the Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas.
The bay is the heart of the place. Two long fingers of land, the Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas, enclose its two arms, and the water is a startling blue-green in clear weather. Downtown Traverse City runs along the shore, with a boardwalk, a harbor, and a main street of restaurants, bookshops and breweries. It is a lively place, in some ways too popular in July, when the beaches and sidewalks fill up, but the setting more than carries it.
For riders, the loop that matters is M-22, the highway that circles the Leelanau Peninsula. It runs along the shoreline through small villages, orchards and dunes, with water views at nearly every turn, and the surface is generally good. Leland, a little harbor town, has Fishtown, a cluster of weathered fishing shanties from the nineteenth century that remain in use, and farther south Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, named for an Ojibwe legend of a mother bear waiting for her cubs, has towering sand bluffs above Lake Michigan. In 2011 viewers of a morning television show voted it the most beautiful place in America.
Traverse City has every service: fuel, supermarkets, hotels and plenty of food. Kingsley, to the south, is a small town if you head that way. The best time is September, when the water is still warm, the crowds are lighter and the colors are beginning to turn, though June is also pleasant. Midsummer weekends bring slow traffic and full parking lots. Winter brings lake-effect snow, which closes many of the scenic roads, so most visitors come between May and October. Fog off the bay can slow the morning start.