Get Fit
Your vacation: As much as you’re loving those lunches o’ lettuce and nights sweatin’ in the old home gym, perhaps your weight-loss campaign could use a pick-me-up? Inside Boyne Mountain’s Solace Spa – the 18,000-square-foot sanctuary Spa Magazine named one of the best in the world – you’ll find reasons galore to keep working: daily fitness classes (yoga, Pilates, step aerobics and more), a state-of-the-art gym and Boyne’s hallmark outdoor heated pool at the base of the ski hill.
You’ll also find rewards for all that hard work. Start with a European bathing ritual – a round of warm whirlpool, aromatherapy spritz, cedar sauna and purifying steam interspersed with cool, stimulating showers. Indulge in a four-handed massage ($220) or the detoxifying Matterhorn mud mask ($145). Afterward, enjoy a light meal at Das Cafe, then slide those ever-slimming hips under the downy comforter in your room at Mountain Grand Lodge, and rest assured: getting fit can be utterly fabulous. 231-549-7946 for spa reservations. Rooms start at $149+ nightly. 800-GO-BOYNE, boyne.com.
Quit Smoking
Your vacation: Park those fresh-air-loving lungs at a place where you can always breathe easy: Bayshore Resort, the first resort in Traverse City to go totally smoke-free – and not far from a healthy, lung-affirming snowshoe hike on Radio Tower Hill. Like your resolution, the path here is uphill but not impossible; the view from the top, nothing short of breathtaking. Nightly rates start at $72 – folks 60 and older staying two nights or more pay only $57 nightly sun-thurs through May 8, 800-634-4401, bayshore-resort.com. Access Radio Tower Hill from parking lot K behind Munson Hospital. Rent snowshoes at McLain Cycle & Fitness. 231-941-7161 or 231-941-8855, mclaincycle.com.
Chill Out
Your vacation: Sure, in each of the three rustic cabins at Cheboygan State Park, there are enough bunk beds to sleep eight. But when you’ve got a toasty little wood-stove-warmed cabin that’s tucked in a snowy woods, overlooking the Straits of Mackinac and sitting on a quiet cross-country ski trail – well, maybe you just want the place all to yourself. At $65 nightly, you can have it. 231-627-2811, michigan.gov/dnr.
Lynda Twardowski is travel editor at Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine.lmt@traversemagazine.com
Note: This article was originally published in January 2008 and was updated for the web February 2008.