Good Harbor Beach (Bohemian Road / CR 669)

This is a broad Lake Michigan beach at the end of Bohemian Road (CR 669), north of Glen Arbor. It is known for pale, clear shallows, a gently sloping shore and open views across the lake. Come for a beach walk, a swim or an unhurried stretch of shoreline. The surface changes underfoot: there is soft sand, but the waterline and shallows also have rounded pebbles and rocks. Water shoes are useful if you plan to wade. Visitors report both quiet and busy days; the long shore gives you room to walk away from the access if it feels crowded.

Bohemian Road runs from M-22 through Port Oneida to the beach at its end. The access has auto parking, a picnic table and a composting toilet. It is listed as wheelchair accessible, but the route and beach-surface details are not specified.

Facing Lake Michigan, leashed pets are generally allowed west, or left, of CR 669; pets are not allowed east, or right. Piping plovers nest on Lakeshore beaches in spring, so protected areas and temporary closures can change where you may walk. Follow posted signs. Lake Michigan waves and rip currents can become dangerous quickly, even at a gently sloping beach; check conditions before swimming.

A few seconds south of the beach access, Shalda Creek runs from the woods into Lake Michigan. Its water is warmer than the lake, making the creek mouth a small change of scene just beyond the open shore.

Rounded pale pebbles show through the shallows. Look for Petoskey stones too: they are fossil colonial coral with a distinctive hexagonal pattern, smoothed by the waves. They are protected, so admire them where you find them.

For a shoreline photo, use the stones and clear water as foreground, then let the curving beach lead your eye along the shore. The westward view across Lake Michigan takes in Pyramid Point and Whaleback dune, especially at sunset.

Good Harbor Bay once reached farther south into what are now Little Traverse and Lime Lakes. As lake levels fell, spits and beach-and-dune ridges formed and separated the lakes; forest now hides much of the low ridge-and-swale pattern. The sand may have begun as Canadian glacial sediment, then was moved and reshaped by meltwater, ancestral lakes, waves and wind before becoming beaches and dunes.

North Unity stood at the mouth of Shalda Creek. Bohemian settlers from what are now the Czech Republic and Germany arrived through Chicago and settled here in 1855. A shared barracks about 150 feet long and 20 feet wide sheltered the first winter. The settlement later had a sawmill and schoolhouse; a general store and post office opened in 1859, and John Shalda built a gristmill at the creek. Fire destroyed North Unity in 1871, and many families moved inland to what became Shalda Corners.