Long strands of sandy beaches. Endless miles of woodland wilderness. Countless streams and rivers that run clear and fast. Michigan offers all this and more, especially on its Upper Peninsula.

On your first look at Saugatuck, Mich., you might think you had arrived on Cape Cod -- without the tourist-trap activities and chain stores and strip malls. The sign welcoming you to town is designed to look like an artist's palette; a fitting symbol given the former lumber town's reputation as a serious creative colony only 150 miles from Chicago. Shop in the mom-and-pop boutiques. Take in a down-home concert at Ox-Bow, part of the Art Institute of Chicago. Rent a boat to explore the meandering Kalamazoo River. Grab a malt at the Saugatuck Drugstore Soda Fountain, which dates to 1913. Best of all, kick back in the dunes of Oval Beach or Saugatuck Dunes State Park, and watch the waves lap the Lake Michigan shorline.

Mount Bohemia ski area, in Ontonagon, is a tiny mountain with a very big attitude in the Porcupine Mountains on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It offers topography more associated with big resorts in the Rocky Mountains -- chutes, cornices and cliffs -- on a 1,465-foot hill overlooking Copper Harbor and Lake Superior. Two chairlifts, and snowcats, serve ungroomed glades and dozens of trails that boast up to 300 inches of snow in some years. In the summer, historic Copper Harbor becomes a gateway to Isle Royale National Park, and offers visitors a quiet respite on Lake Michigan.

Ernest Hemingway, a devotee of Michigan's northern woods and rivers, helped put Petoskey on the map when he used it as the stage for the characters in his first novel, "Torrents of Spring." Filled with charming Victorian-style homes and stores in its Gaslight District, the town has a quant but authentic feel. Hemingway memorabilia is found down the road in the Little Traverse History Museum in Traverse City. Charlevoix plants 50,000 petunias at curbsides every Memorial Day. Fish Town offers ferries to the Manitou Islands from a harbor bordered by a waterfall and old fishing shacks converted to boutiques and restaurants. Old Mission and Leelanau boast more than 18 wineries. And don't miss Glen Arbor, home of Cherry Republic, the biggest cherry retailer in the world.