The drive from Chicago (proper) takes about five hours on a good day. Add holiday traffic and a stop outside of Grand Rapids, and you're looking at an additional thirty to forty-five minutes of car time, unless you are like my father, who, back when I was a kid, refused to make stops on the way up north in his quarterly quest to outrun everyone heading in our general direction. By the time you cross the 45th parallel and the tree line starts thickening, the anticipation finally starts kicking in. You've earned this. The lake is waiting!

What's also waiting, if you haven't done the prep work, is a dock still sitting in the yard, a water heater that needs 45 minutes to recover, and a propane tank that ran dry sometime in March. Memorial Day weekend is the highest-stakes arrival of the year for second homeowners. It's the first real test of how well the property survived winter, and it's often followed immediately by the first rental guest of the season. Getting it right requires thinking like a general manager, not a vacationer, for about two weeks before you ever leave your driveway.

Here's how to run that process cleanly.

Dock installation in Northern Michigan typically opens up once ice-out is confirmed and water temperatures stabilize, which in most years falls between late April and mid-May. If you're working with a dock service, call them now to confirm your installation date and get it in writing. Companies like Torch Lake Dock Service and similar regional operators book out fast in the spring, and "we'll get to it" is not a schedule. If your dock uses a pipe system with sections that need to be leveled and anchored, ask specifically whether the crew will check the crib or anchor condition after a hard freeze season. Last winter was rough on a lot of structures. Confirm the date, confirm the crew, and ask for a photo when it's done. That photo matters more than you think when you're still in Illinois.

These three systems are interdependent, and you want them activated in the right order. If your property was winterized, a plumber needs to restore water service before anything else happens. Pipes that were blown out and valved off need to be pressurized slowly, and someone needs to physically check for leaks before the water heater fires. A good property manager or a local plumber can handle this in a single visit. Budget around $150 to $250 for a spring startup call in most Northern Michigan markets, depending on the complexity of your system.

Propane delivery should be scheduled at least ten days out from your arrival. Call your supplier, confirm your tank level remotely if you have a monitor, and request a fill if you're below 30 percent. Superior Propane and Ferrellgas both serve the region, and both get slammed with Memorial Day requests. Early is better. Once propane is live, your range, water heater, and any gas fireplace are all operational. That matters for your guests almost as much as it matters for you.

HVAC is last in the sequence, and honestly, Northern Michigan in late May is unpredictable enough that you want both heating and cooling confirmed. A quick check from a local HVAC company to verify the system fires properly and the filters are clean costs about $75 to $100 and saves you from calling someone on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Those calls go to voicemail.

Traverse City is a genuinely wonderful small city, and on the Wednesday before Memorial Day it turns into a minor humanitarian crisis at the checkout line. Oryana Community Co-op, Tom's Food Markets, and the Traverse City Meijer are all good stores. None of them are fun on a holiday eve with a cart full of provisions.

The better move is using a delivery service. Instacart operates in Traverse City and pulls from multiple local stores, including Tom's. You can schedule a delivery window for Thursday morning or early Friday, before you arrive, if your property manager or a trusted neighbor can receive it. Alternatively, ship non-perishables directly through Amazon. A box of pantry staples, paper goods, and coffee arriving three days before you do is one of the genuinely underrated pleasures of owning a second home. Your future self, standing at the counter at 8 a.m. Saturday morning with a cup of coffee already made, will agree.

Resist the urge to walk straight to the dock and stare at the water. That is a deeply human impulse and you should honor it for exactly five minutes, because what follows requires your full attention.

Work through the property systematically. Check every faucet for flow and clarity. Run the hot water long enough to confirm the water heater is functioning. Turn on the range. Walk the exterior and look at the roof, gutters, and foundation for anything that looks different from last fall. Open the crawl space or basement access point and look for signs of moisture intrusion or pest activity. Check every window for seal failure or cracking. Look at the dock and confirm it's level and structurally sound. Test the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Flush every toilet.

None of this takes more than 30 minutes, and the information you gather in that window shapes everything else about the weekend. If you find a problem, you have time to call someone. If you wait until Sunday afternoon, you don't.

This is where a lot of second homeowners lose ground. You arrive exhausted, you enjoy the long weekend, and on the way out the door Monday you do a quick reset. But your first guest of the season deserves a full hospitality setup, not a vacation house that still has your coffee in the cabinet and your kids' sand toys in the garage.

Walk through the property the way a stranger would. Are the beds made with clean linens? Is there a welcome guide that reflects current local information, not 2022's restaurant list? Are the kitchen supplies complete, including a working can opener, a functioning corkscrew, and enough plates and glasses for the number of guests you're hosting? Is the outdoor furniture clean and deployed? Are kayaks or other watercraft staged properly? Is the propane grill filled and working?

One useful move: create a printed one-page welcome sheet with the Wi-Fi password, the trash pickup schedule, the nearest urgent care location, and two or three honest restaurant recommendations. Guests read those. They also photograph them. That detail costs you 15 minutes and earns you a line in the five-star review. (Traverse City Tourism keeps a current events calendar you can reference for any local recommendations worth adding.)

If you use a property manager, this is the moment to clarify roles. Who is handling the dock confirmation? Who is scheduling the spring startup? Who is doing the pre-arrival walkthrough and taking photos? Who is staging the property after your visit and before the first guest check-in? Write it down and send it in an email so there's a record. Not because you don't trust them, but because Memorial Day weekend is their busiest week of the year too, and ambiguity is how things fall through the cracks.

If you self-manage, add a calendar block two days before you arrive to make these calls yourself. It takes about 45 minutes and eliminates the most common Memorial Day weekend problems before they happen.

A five-star guest experience and a genuinely restful personal visit are not mutually exclusive goals, but they do require planning. The owners who pull into the driveway and immediately start triaging problems didn't leave enough runway. The ones who arrive to a dock in the water, a stocked kitchen, and a house that smells like it was cleaned yesterday spent about 90 minutes on logistics in the preceding two weeks.

Your property on Torch Lake is worth more than a reactionary approach to seasonal prep. It has appreciated significantly since you bought it, it generates income when you're not there, and it's the place your family is going to talk about for decades. Treat the opening weekend accordingly.

The lake will still be there when you finish the checklist. It always is. And it looks considerably better when you're not worried about the propane.

Northern Michigan Property Insider covers the operational, financial, and regulatory issues that matter most to second homeowners across the region. Have a question about seasonal prep, property management, or rental economics? Reply directly to this email.