For year three of Winter Wonderland Weekend, my friend and I went to Cedarville in the Upper Peninsula, about a half hour east of the bridge. It was a wonderful weekend, filled with quite a bit of adventure! For those of you who have read about my 2026 plans, you might have been surprised by the vast array of places I listed, from small town Copper Harbor to Chicago, but for me, any new place is simply an adventure waiting to happen! And Cedarville is no exception. Despite being a very small town, it had plenty for my friend and I to do, and I still have a couple places in the town that we didn’t manage to make it to that I hope to return for at a later date.
Firstly, we drove up to Cedarville, passing through Petoskey and St. Ignace on the way, our previous Winter Wonderland Weekend destinations. Though it takes longer to drive that way, it adds a nice touch, passing through our previous trips on the way to our next. I don’t think I’ve ever crossed the bridge at night before, and it really looked quite cool, though I couldn’t get a very good picture, as you can see. I think this one gets the point of the coolness across though!
We made it to the hotel, the Cedarville Hotel, where there was no check-in required, each room has a password that you input that they send you in a text. We took our stuff inside through the snow and settled into the room. It was a rather standard hotel room; bed, bathroom, desk, window. But there was a fairly large space for hanging up coats and clothing, which does make sense. It’s the UP in winter, who knows how many coats someone needs to wear! There was also a jet tub in the corner of the main room, on the other side of the wall from the bathroom, a rather large one at that! It also had tub to ceiling mirrors on the two sides that were against the wall, so you had no trouble checking your reflection, though I did keep forgetting that it was there, which did result in me jumpscaring myself several times, thinking there was a person in the room when it was really just my reflection.
If you’ve read about my previous hotel travels, you know that I love to talk about the hotel’s pools. Unfortunately, at the time of my staying there, the pool area was undergoing some sort of renovation, so I won’t be able to provide any information on that. Should I stay there again once the pool upgrade has been finished, however, I will be sure to add a note to this article and let you all know how the pool is! I personally think that was made up for by the fact that Netflix was accessible at this hotel, as our hotel last Winter Wonderland didn’t have that availability, nor have other hotels I’ve stayed at.
After we settled into the room, we decided we should go and find some dinner, so we ended up at a local bar, Cattail’s Cove. I simply had a lemonade, and I ordered some chicken tenders and fries. The chicken tenders were delicious, but I’m quite particular about my fries and I didn’t really like the ones there. That’s not to say that they were bad, I think most people would like them. I’m just a picky eater. The bar wasn’t very busy, just a few couples in there as we ate. There was a man singing live music in the corner, though I thought the volume was a little loud, as I practically had to yell at my friend to talk to her. The man sang well though, and with an adjustment to the volume, I think it would have provided a very good atmosphere, as the bar was quite cute.
We got up the next morning and went out and about, deciding to hit up the local shops, such as the Cedarville Foods grocery store, The Cottage gift shop, and the Applecore General Store gift shop. The grocery had some rather cute holiday decorations up, where we got some snack foods at the grocery, making big plans for Netflix watching that night that we ended up being too tired for.
At The Cottage, which is right next door to the grocery store, I got a patch to iron onto a jean jacket (whenever I find a jean jacket that I deem worthy to be the patch jacket), along with a couple of stickers to put on a water bottle.
At the Applecore General Store, they had a little scavenger hunt going on; if you found one of the little gnomes hidden around the shop, you got a little prize of a granola bar. I got a sticker there as well, along with a robin pin, because, well. It was one of Robin’s travels!
After that, we headed to Ang-Gio’s Restaurant for lunch, an Italian place. I ordered fettuccine alfredo with chicken, and it was so good. I ended up not eating all of it, so I took the leftovers with me, and we headed off for our next adventure: driving around and seeing the area. There were some beautiful trees; I love the way boreal forests look, especially as birch trees are my favorite tree, and they’re always so pretty covered in snow.
The area has a lot of islands scattered just off the shore, so I had been hoping to see those, but the lake had iced over between the islands and covered with snow, so it didn’t look particularly fancy.
We decided to go up to Sault Ste. Marie, like we did last year, thinking we’d go to the Antlers again, but we weren’t very hungry when we were up there.
We did, however, see not one, not two, but three bald eagles on the drive up there. We ultimately just hit up some shops and I got some Christmas shopping done at Walmart, Meijer, and Hobby Lobby. We drove around a bit up there, looking at the town’s Christmas lights, then driving through a neighborhood area to see their Christmas lights. We ended up on a dead end road we had to turn back from, and when driving back, I went over a railroad track and just happened to look to my right as we went over it… to see a big light coming toward us! The railroad didn’t have a guardrail that dropped down, and the red light started flashing right as we got over the railroad. It was one of the very slow trains with a hundred cars on it, so it took another minute or so to actually get to the crossing, but you all know by now that I’m a bit dramatic and I definitely say now that I almost got hit by a train.
We went back down to the Cedarville area, and by that time, we were feeling hungry, so we tried to go to Snows Bar and Grill. Except that we got there at 8:59 and they close at 9:00 in the winter. So instead, we ended up going to the neighboring town of Hessel and went to The Islander Bar, where I got steak bites and fries. It was all delicious, and the waitress was exceptionally friendly, making conversation with us whenever she stopped by our table, as this place wasn’t very busy either, though that’s likely because most people stay home on cold winter’s nights. The cook was very nice as well, coming out to ask how the steak was, as I’d ordered it rare, but steak bites are so small that they cook faster, so it’s harder to make those rare. They were a little more done than I would have liked, but I didn’t tell him that, especially as they were definitely still medium rare, and I love my steaks so rare that most places overcook them no matter the size of the steak, so I wasn’t exactly too fussed about it, since it was still delicious.
The next morning, we got up and went to the Little Buoy Bakery, a very cute little place that used to be a gas station, with the pump station still out in front, sans the actual pumps. I got a couple things there that were absolutely delicious, then we went to visit a friend of mine in the UP to drop off the Christmas presents I had gotten them. It looked like we were about to be caught in a blizzard on the drive up, but no snow ever happened.
On the way there, we saw one adolescent bald eagle, and while visiting my friend, saw a full grown bald eagle and another adolescent.
We hit the road, seeing our seventh bald eagle eating roadkill in the road, and the car behind us almost hit it, because while everyone else changed lanes for the bald eagle, they didn’t. We were caught in a brief snowstorm, that ended VERY suddenly (these pictures were taken less than two minutes apart).
We crossed the bridge and decided to stop in Mackinaw City for lunch, going to the Dixie Saloon, where I got, you guessed it, a steak and mashed potatoes. The food was good, but we were unfortunately sat near a table of teenage boys talking quite loudly about all the weird girls in their grade. As a girl who’s always been the weird girl (and proud of it!), I was somewhat offended on behalf of these mystery girls. I think I’d have to say my favorite place of the weekend was the Islander, not just for the food, but also for the general atmosphere and wonderful customer service of both the waitress and the cook.
We ended up going to Cheboygan, about fifteen minutes east of Mackinaw City, to go to the theater, as we had tried stopping at the theater in Mackinaw City on the way up, and were met with a very rude employee. The man was nice enough, but the woman was impatient, rude , and seemed eager to get us out the door after telling us that the movie we wanted to see had started fifteen minutes earlier. I found that interesting, as the website the google maps links you to for the theater gave me a different start time, and when I even tried to call the theater to check, all I got was an automated response that also told me the same time as the website. Furthermore, my friend and I weren’t particularly happy, as the GPS doesn’t actually take you to the theater, just the general area, and the general area the theater was in was unshoveled, so we were wading through almost knee deep snow trying to find a theater with an inaccurate website and phone number to be ridiculed by the employee.
In Cheboygan, however, the theater is easy to get to and the employees there are not rude at all. We went and saw Zootopia 2, after having seen the first one together 10 years before on a different adventure, and I gotta say, if you haven’t watched the movies, what are you doing? They’re so good!
All in all, the third annual Winter Wonderland Weekend was a smashing success, and I can’t wait to see what next year’s adventure brings! And if my rant about rare steak made you question my sanity, well, first of all, you’re not the only one, but second, just wait until you read my article next week and the exquisite dining experience I had on that adventure! Until next time, I wish you all grand adventures!