Michigan

Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes, which gives it more freshwater coastline than any other state, dunes included.

Detroit has spent the last decade rebuilding its downtown and riverfront after decades of decline, and the Motown Museum still runs out of the original Hitsville U.S.A. house. Up north, Traverse City anchors a cherry-growing region and a stretch of coastline that looks more like New England than the Midwest.

Sleeping Bear Dunes, further along the shoreline, has sand dunes tall enough to make you forget you're near a lake and not an ocean.