Before Memorial Day: Boyne City Starts Feeling Like Summer

Festival tents line the waterfront near Veterans Memorial Park as Boyne City comes alive during Morel Mushroom Festival weekend. Boats are slowly returning to the marina, the crowds are back downtown, and Northern Michigan begins easing into another summer on Lake Charlevoix.

There’s something about Boyne City right before Memorial Day weekend that just feels good.

This weekend, downtown was full of that first real burst of summer energy as the National Morel Mushroom Festival wrapped up along the waterfront. After months of quiet streets and frozen docks, Boyne finally started feeling awake again.

We spent the day walking through downtown with family, moving between the festival crowds, waterfront views, carnival rides, and rows of local vendors set up throughout the Arts & Crafts Show. Veterans Memorial Park was completely alive kids running between rides, music playing near the water, families carrying food and shopping bags through the crowds while boats slowly started returning to Lake Charlevoix nearby.

It was one of those perfect Northern Michigan spring weekends where nobody seemed in a hurry to leave.

Earlier in the morning, people gathered around Gildas' Lake Street Bakery before the festival crowds fully picked up, while others stopped into Lake Charlevoix Coffee Company for iced coffees and specialty drinks before walking downtown. By lunchtime, the patio at Lake Street Pub was packed on a beautiful 70-degree afternoon, with people spilling outside for drinks, lunch, and sunshine after a long Michigan winter.

That’s the thing about Boyne City this time of year.

The town still carries a little bit of spring calm in the mornings, but everywhere else you can feel summer starting to take over. The marina begins filling again. Patios come back to life. Downtown stays busy later into the evening. Everyone just seems happy to be outside again.

By next weekend, Memorial Day will officially arrive Up North.

The docks will fill. The lake traffic will return. Restaurants will stay packed late into the evening.

But this weekend felt like the real beginning of summer in Northern Michigan.

This is part of our Northern Michigan Summer Returns series exploring the waterfront towns, seasonal traditions, quiet mornings, and small moments that make summer Up North unlike anywhere else.

Ready to start planning your Northern Michigan summer? Start here.