Frankfort & Elberta — the Harbor — a stop on M-22.
You're coming into Frankfort, and this is the biggest harbor between Manistee and Traverse City — worth a stop for lunch if the timing's right.
The town sits on Betsie Lake, a drowned river mouth that makes a genuinely protected deep harbor, which on this coast is rare and valuable. Two piers run out into the lake with a lighthouse on the north one, and walking out that pier at sunset is the thing everyone does here, for good reason. Across the water is Elberta, the working twin — quieter, a little rougher around the edges, with the old industrial bones still visible.
And here's what those bones are. For most of the twentieth century this was a rail-ferry port. Enormous car-ferries ran from here straight across Lake Michigan to Wisconsin, carrying whole freight trains in their holds — you drove the railcars aboard, closed the doors, and sailed. They ran in winter through the ice, which is about as hard as marine work gets on this continent. The last of them stopped in the eighties, and the town has been finding a new way to live ever since.
Downtown Frankfort is two blocks of shops and a beautiful beach at the end of Main Street. Then we head north for the lighthouse.