Back in July we spent 10 days in Traverse City, MI. We’d picked that time of year as that’s when the city hosts the National Cherry Festival – an 8 day extravaganza dedicated to all things cherry.
I didn’t know much else about Traverse City and ended up really enjoying our stay there. It’s a cute city on the Grand Traverse Bay part of Lake Michigan, it’s near some nice beaches (including on the lake itself), has some great distilleries and cideries and has lots more to do in the area.
Here’s what we got up to during our 10 days in Traverse City.
Where We Stayed In Traverse City
Tru by Hilton Traverse City
We stayed all 10 nights at the Tru by Hilton Traverse City. It’s just outside of downtown, but took less than 10 minutes to drive there and was within walking distance of a large Meijer grocery store, fast food restaurants and more.
We’d booked our stay there because all the other hotels were $$$$ due to the National Cherry Festival being in town. The Tru was expensive too cash-wise, but cost a standard number of Hilton Honors points – 30,000 per night. That was a bargain by comparison and so we appreciated having this as an option for staying there.
I have mixed feelings about our stay there though. It was good value when using points, it has some great public areas for hanging out and/or working in and their staff members are friendly and hardworking.
What I didn’t like was the room design. It had all kinds of annoying quirks and missing features that made that side of it a bit of a frustrating 10 days. You can read more about it in my full review here.
Things To Do In Traverse City
National Cherry Festival
As I mentioned earlier, the reason we visited Traverse City when we did is so we could check out the National Cherry Festival. This free event runs from Saturday to Saturday at the beginning of July. Many activities get repeated each day, so there’s not much point in attending the festival for all 8 days unless you just reaaaaaaally love cherries!
It did seem though that visiting at some point on the first weekend is worth it as there’s a two hour airshow, plus that’s when it’s busier and so it has even more of a festival-y vibe.
You can even take part in cherry pie eating and cherry pit spitting contests, so we did both of those and did pretty well considering it was both our first times doing those kinds of activities. Check out this post for more about the National Cherry Festival.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Something else we were particularly keen on visiting while in Traverse City was Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as several people had recommended it to us. This National Lakeshore covers more than 70,000 acres and features the challenging Dune Climb.
With it being a National Lakeshore there are beaches you can visit, there’s a scenic drive, museums and more. You can read more about our day out there here.
Beulah
Shae’s mom grew up in Beulah but hadn’t returned in many years. Although she wasn’t with us, we decided to visit Beulah towards the end of our time in Traverse City as it’s only about 45 minutes southwest of there.
It’s a cute little village on the banks of Crystal Lake and has a population of only ~300 people. Despite that, it seemed to be a surprisingly vibrant area with an art fair that weekend, a brewery (more about that in the next section), restaurants and more.
Mitchell State Park
On our way down to Grand Rapids after our stay in Traverse City we stopped for lunch at Mitchell State Park. It’s a fairly small park, but was conveniently located about halfway between the two cities and is sandwiched between two lakes – Lake Mitchell and Lake Cadillac.
We stopped for lunch on the Lake Mitchell side and it was a lovely spot to have a picnic and meant we got a bit more use out of our Michigan State Park Passport we’d purchased while in the UP a couple of weeks beforehand. It was surprisingly windy that day though, so we didn’t hang around for much longer after finishing our food.
Where We Ate & Drank In Traverse City
Taproot Cider House
On the first day of the National Cherry Festival we went downtown to check it out. While the air show was going on we decided to have a drink at the nearby Taproot Cider House.
They have ~18 different types of cider, as well as cocktails, wine, beer, spirits and more. Shae and I both decided to get cider flights; they charge $3 per cider and you can order as many as you like.
Cider can be hit or miss for me as I don’t always like the flavor, plus some cideries have ciders that sound like they should have different flavors but which end up tasting the same (to me anyway). Taproot Cider House wasn’t like that though – all their ciders were very good and they all had a distinct flavor that tasted like their description.
From what I can remember, my favorite was Cinnamon Girl. Not (just) because it’s a Neil Young song, but it had a lovely, warm flavor that tasted like apple pie. Shae’s favorites were the El Chavo which had habanero pepper, mango and apple, as well as the Queen Ann which had strawberries, blueberries and cherries.
Truffles is teetotal and doesn’t like fruit anyway, so she stuck to water despite what the photo below might suggest!
Traverse City Whiskey Co
While looking up directions from our hotel to downtown, I noticed that there was a distillery in the city called Traverse City Whiskey Co. When checking online, I saw that they were pet-friendly too, so the three of us headed there one afternoon.
Traverse City Whiskey Co has a whole bunch of interesting whiskeys. In addition to a regular bourbon, straight bourbon and rye whiskey, they have an apple whiskey and – with this being Traverse City – a cherry whiskey. They offer whiskey flights, so I tried all of those and they were all very tasty.
They had some other interesting-sounding whiskeys too which had been aged in Port, Cabernet Franc and Sherry barrels, so I figured it’d be rude not to try those as well 😉 Those were tasty too and had a distinctive flavor, but I preferred the first flight.
Shae didn’t miss out as she discovered a new drink she loved. The distillery had a frozen cocktail called a Friskey which was a cherry whiskey slushie. She absolutely loved this even though she isn’t a huge fan of whiskey, although she has gained more of an appreciation for it since we visited Dublin again last year.
Five Shores Brewing
While exploring Beulah, we stopped by Five Shores Brewing for a quick drink which turned into a slightly longer drink. That’s because similar to how Traverse City Whiskey Co had interesting-sounded whiskeys, Five Shores had some interesting-sounding beers. They offered flights of four beers, so I did one flight and then a second flight so that I could try many of them.
The first flight was:
- All Good Things – an American Pale Ale
- Bougie Peach Cobbler – this is an imperial stout aged in cognac barrels and on peaches
- Otter Space IPA – a hazy IPA
- Blackberry Hard Seltzer – a fruited hard seltzer
My second flight consisted of:
- Te Quiero – a Mexican-style Amber Lager
- Bougie Peach Cobbler – the same one I’d gotten in my first flight
- Cold Machine IPA – a cold IPA
- Haze Rd – a double IPA
As you might be able to tell by the fact that I ordered it twice, my favorite was the Bougie Peach Cobbler. That wasn’t too surprising as stouts and porters tend to be my favorite, but it was very flavorful.
Brengman Brothers Winery
We had a great time at the cidery, distillery and brewery, but struck out at the winery we went to. After visiting Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore we stopped by Brengman Brothers Winery and had a not-great experience.
When we arrived at 4:20pm we were told they were no longer offering tastings or flights since they were expecting a party of 16 at 5pm. This seemed very strange since there were two servers behind the bar and a third person, maybe a server but possibly a manager, handling a large party himself outside. They were also going to be open until 8pm. I could understand if they were going to be closing at 5pm, but the idea that simply having a large party with a reservation meant they wouldn’t be serving any other customers flights or tastings seemed very strange.
We were there after 5pm when the large party was due to arrive, and there may have been 16 people, but at least five of them were children and they had bottles on the table. So, we had to have a glass or bottle because 10 adults needed several bottles? The third person who finished with the large party was wandering around, talking to other guests and overseeing tastings at their tables after 5pm, so them refusing to serve flights to other customers was a strange decision.
Shae wanted to do a wine tasting but ended up having to get a glass of wine. I’d wanted to do a spirits flight, but they weren’t doing flights and so I just got a rye whiskey. Neither her wine nor my rye whiskey were great, so our stop at Brengman Brothers Winery was a bust.
Moomers Homemade Ice Cream
We might not have been able to get flights at Brengman Brothers, but we did manage to get flights elsewhere of something more unexpected – ice cream!
When Shae was at the laundromat in Traverse City, she got chatting to a few ladies (Chris, Angie and Lesley – not sure how Shae manages to remember names of people she met once a month ago!) who recommended visiting Moomers Homemade Ice Cream. That’s because they not only have delicious ice cream, but you can get ice cream flights in order to try out several flavors.
We stopped by there on our way back from Beulah and it was a great recommendation. The ice creams were creamy and delicious, with Cherries Moobilee – black cherry flavored ice cream with chunks of black sweet cherries, chocolate fudge swirl, and chunks of brownies – being our favorite.
What We Missed In Traverse City
There are a few places we didn’t get to in Traverse City, so here are some places on the to-do list in case we visit there again in the future:
- Empire Bluffs
- Beaver Island
- Traverse City State Hospital (a former asylum you can now visit)
- The Filling Station Microbrewery
- Silver Spruce Brewing Company
- Cherry Republic
- SkyBridge Michigan
- Petoskey (you can jump off the breakwall into Little Traverse Bay)
- Mammoth Distilling
- Kilwins Chocolate Kitchen
- Petoskey Brewing Company
[…] staying 10 days in Traverse City for the National Cherry Festival, we had another 10 night stay a couple of hours south of there […]