Lake Charlevoix

Lake Charlevoix is really three lakes stitched into one: the main basin, the South Arm running down to East Jordan, and Round Lake — the small, deep harbor in downtown Charlevoix that connects the whole system to open Lake Michigan through the Pine River Channel. That channel is why sailboats and Great Lakes-capable yachts share the water with pontoons and wakeboard boats, and why the swing bridge on US-31 stops car traffic on the hour all summer to let masts through. Charlevoix itself is the resort town — Round Lake's municipal marina fills with transient boats reserved six months out, Bridge Street runs from the harbor up to a strip of restaurants and shops, and Earl Young's mushroom houses (26 residences and four commercial buildings, built from glacial boulders over a fifty-year career starting in the early 1900s) are scattered on foot between Clinton Street and Boulder Park — pick up the self-guided map at the visitor center on Mason Street rather than trying to find them blind. Boyne City, on the lake's eastern shore, works differently: no channel to Lake Michigan, a working-town Main Street that still has a hardware store and a distillery instead of only galleries, and a municipal marina and beach that locals actually use, not just tourists. East Jordan anchors the South Arm at the lake's southern end — quieter, fewer restaurants, the place a South Arm Cafe cinnamon roll and a walk around Memorial Park's marina count as the whole morning. Between Boyne City and East Jordan, the four-car Ironton Ferry has run the same 610-foot crossing on a cable since 1876, cutting what would be a 30-minute drive around the South Arm down to a few minutes on the water — five dollars a carload, pedestrians free. May and June run cold for swimming even after the towns fill up; by late July the water's warm enough that Young State Park's beach and the Boyne City boat launch both get crowded on weekends. October brings the boulder houses into better light for photos and empties the marina slips out for the season.