My dad celebrated a milestone birthday this month, and just a few days before his birthday we realized none of us had been to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the upper peninsula – for native Michiganders that’s almost a crime!

We quickly made plans to cross the big bridge and book a cruise. This is peak season so most of the hotels laughed at me when I called them, and even the campgrounds were completely booked. There wasn’t a single airBNB available in the whole eastern UP! I eventually found a hotel but it wasn’t easy!

We started our trek north on Saturday morning. After crossing the bridge, Mom wanted to stop at the Cut River bridge for a short hike. Under the bridge was a door for the troll!

The hike was short, but it was all stairs. When we got to the bottom there was a creek feeding into Lake Michigan.

After we’d sufficiently stretched our legs, we continued on toward Munising. We stopped at Horseshoe falls, but when we saw they were charging admission to see the waterfall we laughed our way back to the car. Waterfalls are everywhere in the UP, there are plenty that don’t even require hiking, there’s no reason to pay money to see a waterfall. We went to Munising Falls instead.

We were so close to Lake Superior, we continued on to Sand Point so we could dip our toes in the water.

There was a thick mist over the shoreline, I started to get a little concerned because we’d booked a boat cruise but in this mist we’d never be able to see anything!

The water color is incredible, Michigan keeps surprising me with how clear and gorgeous the lakes are.

This is one of my favorite photos from the trip, Mom says “I finally found the stick I’ve been looking for!” and she holds up this cigar-stick that she found on the beach.

All afternoon we watched the mist clear up, then thicken up again. Fortunately, right before our 6pm cruise it cleared up and we had a beautiful boat ride!

It’s hard to tell what makes Pictured Rocks so compelling, is it all the colors caused by minerals leeching out of the sandstone? Or is it the wild rock formations?

Real cruise pic. All the vertical cellphone photos…I die a little bit inside.

One of my favorites – the rainbow cave!

And one of the craziest parts of the cruise – driving into Chapel Cove. It looks like a very tight fit from the boat, but we stayed in 15 ft of crystal clear water. This was definitely the closest we came to the rocks.

A few more of my favorite shots. I could go on and on with photos from our cruise but I’ll rein it in.

About a week after we were there, a section of cliff caved in and almost hit some kayakers. Amazingly, it was caught on camera by a drone, so you can see it for yourself!

The next morning we continued our tour, starting with Wagner Falls and Alger Falls.

Then we headed to the most accessible view at Pictured Rocks: the Miners Castle overlook. No hiking required, plenty of on-site parking, no fees, and one of the most beautiful views!

We walked down to Miners Beach to skip stones (and Mom picked out a few to take home). Kyle and I seriously wished we’d brought the iSUPs along!

We also did the short hike out to Miners Falls. There was a family in the parking lot gearing up as we headed out: shoes, backpacks, camelbaks, trekking poles. We walked the well-worn one-mile-roundtrip path in flip flops. We met them on the way back, they hadn’t made it very far yet.

That pretty much met my goals for the day, but we continued driving east through the national park, stopping at various scenic overlooks.

We stopped at 12-mile beach to skip more stones, and Mom came back with a pocketful.

At Grand Sable Lake we stopped for a picnic lunch, with the quintessential upper peninsula brew. It’s refreshing, eh?

Our last destination before we started heading back home was Grand Marais. Again, the water color is unbelievable – it looks like the Bahamas (but it feels like Canada)!

Naturally, Mom came home with a pocketful of rocks (are you sensing a theme here?).

We didn’t stop on our way north, so on our way south we stopped at the Mackinac Bridge, where we could officially say we’d been in three Great Lakes in one day!

Whew! It sounds like a week-long trip, but we were only gone for one night! In the two days of travel I took about 1500 photos, so if you want to see more from our trip (yup, that’s right, this is my most photo-heavy post ever but there are still more!) check out our Instagram page!