Fruit Country

Notice the orchards climbing the hills to your right — cherries, apples, peaches, and increasingly vineyards. There's real science in why they're HERE and not fifty miles inland, and it's called the lake effect.

Lake Michigan is enormous and deep and it warms and cools far more slowly than land. In spring, that cold body of water keeps the air along the shore chilly, which delays the fruit trees from blossoming — and that delay is everything, because it carries the blossoms safely past the last hard frost that would kill the crop. Then in autumn the lake, still holding summer's heat, keeps the shoreline warm and stretches the growing season out at the other end.

That narrow band of moderated climate is why this coast is one of the great fruit belts of North America, and why Michigan grows most of the tart cherries in the United States — the pie cherries, not the sweet ones you eat out of hand.

In the second week of May this whole shore goes white and pink with blossom. In July there are roadside stands every mile with sweet cherries in paper bags. Stop at one — buy the ones with stems on, they keep better — and you'll understand why people move here.