Start from 26 curated places around Petoskey, MI, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
City Park Grill
The Hemingway bar is also a reliable kitchen — burgers, fish and chips, and Great Lakes perch in a room with 150 years of accumulated character. The food is honest pub fare at fair prices, and the room does the work that no renovated restaurant can replicate. Order a local draft and whatever whitefish preparation is on the board.
Chandler's Restaurant
A 50-seat fine dining room with a 4,000-bottle wine collection housed behind the historic Symons General Store building — the most ambitious dinner in Petoskey. The menu is progressive New American with Northern Michigan sourcing, the wine program is genuinely deep, and the room is intimate without being precious. It's the place Petoskey locals take visitors they want to impress.
Trails & outdoors
Little Traverse Wheelway
A 24-mile paved trail running along the Little Traverse Bay shoreline, connecting Petoskey to Harbor Springs on a flat, accessible route that passes Bayfront Park, Magnus Park, and a string of bay views. It's the backbone trail of the area and the best way to experience the bay without a boat. Bikes are the ideal mode; the full out-and-back to Harbor Springs is a satisfying half-day.
Bear River Trail
A 2.4-mile trail following the Bear River through a wooded valley before opening to Little Traverse Bay, passing a scenic waterfall along the way. The most-reviewed trail in the immediate Petoskey area and consistently the highest-rated — the combination of forested river corridor, waterfall, and bay finish makes it the single best nature walk in the area.
Things to do
Crooked Tree Arts Center
Founded in 1971 in a converted historic church, with four gallery spaces (always free), a theater, a dance studio, and a culinary arts kitchen. The year-round programming covers exhibits, gallery walks, lectures, dance performances, and music — it's the cultural heart of Petoskey and the clearest expression of why the town is more than a resort stop. The building itself is worth seeing.
Bayfront Park & Harbor Breakwall
The waterfront park connecting downtown Petoskey to the marina and the iconic red lighthouse at the harbor mouth. Best at sunset, when the light hits the bay and the lighthouse from the west. The park hosts summer outdoor events and farmers markets, the Wheelway runs through it, and the breakwall walk to the lighthouse is free, short, and one of the most satisfying things you can do in Petoskey.
Landmarks & sights
Bay View Historic District
A National Historic Landmark containing nearly 500 Victorian cottages built starting in 1875 as a Methodist Chautauqua — one of the most intact 19th-century summer communities in the country. The cottages are private residences but the streets are public, and walking them on a summer evening when windows are open and porches are occupied gives a surprisingly vivid sense of what Victorian leisure culture actually looked and sounded like. Hemingway attended programs here as a teenager.
Petoskey State Park Beach
The best-documented Petoskey stone hunting beach in the region — sandy stretches alternating with the rocky sections where fossilized coral (Michigan's state stone) concentrates after storms. The park occupies a bayfront position on Little Traverse Bay with clear, swimmable water and dune habitat behind the beach. This is where you go if a Petoskey stone is on your list.