A 284-foot wall of pale sand rises at the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the walk keeps going across five dunes, about 1.5 miles each way to Lake Michigan. The last stretch back up that face is slower than the walk down. That climb is why the first night belongs at the Lakeshore, not in town.
The Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive is a 7.4-mile one-way loop with pull-offs over Lake Michigan and the Glen Lakes. The overlooks are from those pull-offs, and the full loop takes about two hours if you stop.
Trailers are banned on the drive, and the posted clearance limit applies. A tall campervan checks the posted clearance before it starts the loop. The drive is open to vehicles from late May through late October only. Outside those months you walk it.
You sleep at Platte River Campground or D.H. Day, the two campgrounds inside Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Camping outside the campgrounds anywhere in the Lakeshore is not allowed, so the two campgrounds are the only van nights inside it.
Platte River, by the river mouth and the Lake Michigan beach near it, has electric hookups, a dump station at the entrance, and takes RVs up to 40 feet. D.H. Day is rustic, with vault toilets and no showers, near Glen Arbor and the Dune Climb, and it caps RVs at 35 feet. If you need more sleeping space or a longer rig, RV rentals in Traverse City cover the bigger layouts.
Book the campsite first, because the van is the second booking. Both campgrounds take reservations up to six months ahead for the warm months.
July is when the National Cherry Festival takes over downtown Traverse City. Those dates are the busiest week on the bay, and they fill the Lakeshore campgrounds with the same vans and the same sites, so the pad comes first.
Traverse City State Park
A quarter-mile of sand and a beach house open onto the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay, across US-31 from the campground loops. The TART Trail runs through the park and connects to the Leelanau Trail toward Suttons Bay. As of September 2026, the modern campground is closed through the 2026 season and scheduled to reopen in spring 2027, and day-use stays open through the renovation.
Leelanau State Park
The Grand Traverse Lighthouse marks the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. Rustic campsites run along the rocky Lake Michigan shore, about half of them on the water, and you reserve one on MIDNRReservations.com. Petoskey and the Straits continue in Michigan campervan rentals.
Old Mission Peninsula
Vineyard rows run down to Grand Traverse Bay on both sides of the narrow peninsula. The Old Mission Peninsula Wine Trail has ten member wineries. The Leelanau Peninsula has its own wine region across the bay.
Summer concerts at Interlochen play on Green Lake, a side trip from town.