Empire Bluff — the View Worth the Walk — a stop on M-22 North.
Just south of the village is the Empire Bluff trailhead, and if you have ninety minutes this is arguably the best single view in Michigan for the least effort.
It's about three-quarters of a mile each way through beech and maple woods, gently uphill, and then the forest simply stops and you're standing on a boardwalk platform four hundred feet above Lake Michigan. The dunes run north from under your feet. The Manitou Islands sit out on the horizon. On a clear day the water goes through about six shades of turquoise over the sandbars, and people genuinely gasp when they come out of the trees.
The trail is easy by hiking standards but it is not flat and it is not paved, so proper shoes.
And here's a detail most visitors miss: partway along, the trail passes an old farm clearing with a rusting piece of equipment in it. People farmed up here — badly, and not for long, because it's sand. That failure is half the story of this whole shoreline, and it's why so much of it was available to become a park. Keep that in mind as we drive north through the ghost farms.