Updated June 2026 · Reviewed for current local details and seasonal hours.
The route guide tells you where to drive. This is the other half: keeping the backseat happy for all twenty miles of M-119.
Our Tunnel of Trees route and timing guide covers the drive itself — where M-119 goes, when the color peaks, how long it takes without stops. This article is the other half: how to do the Tunnel of Trees with kids and have everyone still speaking by Cross Village. We’ve driven this road with a backseat at every age, and the difference between a magic morning and a meltdown has never once been the scenery. It’s bathrooms, blood sugar, and knowing when to stop driving. Here’s the playbook we actually use.
The honest math on the Tunnel of Trees with kids
On paper, M-119 runs about 20 miles from Harbor Springs to Cross Village and takes 40–50 minutes without stops. With kids, “without stops” is fiction — and on this road, that’s fine, because stopping is the strategy. Budget a three-to-four-hour half-day and the drive becomes a string of payoffs instead of a long sit. The road itself is the only state highway in Michigan with no centerline, with real hairpins, so you’ll be going slowly whether you planned to or not.
The geography works in your favor if you’re staying with us: from The Bird House, M-119 is about 3 minutes away, the canopy closes in around 20 minutes up the road, the Good Hart General Store sits at about 35, and Legs Inn at the end is roughly 50 — all before stops, all on the slow scenic route.
What works at each age
- Babies: honestly the easiest passengers on this route. Time the drive to a nap and trade off who gets the lake views.
- Toddlers (2–4): burn energy at the farm stop first (below), aim for one beach stop, and be home by lunch. Don’t attempt the full run.
- Ages 5–9: the games below were invented for them — plus the promise of the strangest building they’ve ever seen waiting at the end.
- Tweens and teens: rotate the front seat and make one of them the official trip photographer. Sulking drops measurably when there’s a job.
The 2026 detour you need to know about
Before you plan anything: in April 2026, a culvert failed and washed out a section of M-119 between Island View Road and Division Road — between Good Hart and Cross Village. The state closed that stretch and set up a detour along Island View Road and North State Road, with no firm reopening date as of this writing. What it means for your day: the southern half of the drive and Good Hart are unaffected, but the final run to Cross Village may route you off M-119 onto the marked detour. Check the current MDOT status before you commit to the full route — and if the detour adds too much car time for your crew, the bakery-and-beach version of this day is still a complete win.
Carsickness, bathrooms, and the car bin
Three pieces of logistics make or break this drive with kids, and none of them show up in the scenic-byway brochures.
Carsickness first. This is the curviest road your kids will ride all year. If anyone turns green on winding roads, give the remedy 30–60 minutes before you leave — not at the first complaint — crack a window, and assign the front seat to the most reliable victim. Skip the tablets and screens; looking down makes it worse. The games below exist partly for this reason: eyes up and out the window is the cheapest motion-sickness cure there is.
Bathrooms second. There are essentially two on the whole route — the Good Hart General Store and Legs Inn — and both can be seasonal, busy, or (this year) affected by roadwork hours. Everyone goes before you leave the house, no exceptions, and the Good Hart stop happens whether anyone claims to need it or not.
The car bin third. One bin in the cargo area: snacks, water bottles, wipes, a trash bag, two towels, and water shoes. The towels and water shoes are non-negotiable for the beach stop — the shoreline near Cross Village is cobble, not soft sand, and small feet give up fast without them.
Four stops, four jobs
Our route guide describes these places properly. Here’s the job each one does for the backseat, south to north.
Pond Hill Farm — the energy burn
Right at the south end, before the narrow part begins. Animals to feed, hayrides in season, a café for the first snack. An hour here buys you forty quiet minutes of canopy — for toddlers, it’s the difference between a drive and an ordeal.
Good Hart General Store — the midpoint reset
Bathroom, snack, and a pot pie for the beach bag, all in one 1930s building that doubles as the town’s post office. Hours have shifted during the 2026 roadwork, so don’t build the day around a specific closing time.
Woolam Family Nature Preserve — the payoff
A little under two miles south of Cross Village, with thousands of feet of Lake Michigan shoreline and room to spread out. This is where the “drive” becomes the thing they remember: stone skipping, wading, an hour of running. This is what the towels are for.
Legs Inn — the finish line
A stone-and-driftwood lodge with a row of upturned stove legs along the roofline and a carved-wood interior straight out of a fairy tale. Kids who were done with the car twenty minutes ago forget about it here. It’s seasonal — roughly late May through mid-October — and busy, so call ahead for an early dinner or just walk the grounds and the lake overlook.
Backseat games for a road with no billboards
M-119 has no billboards, no fast food, and barely any signs — which makes it surprisingly good game territory. Our rotation: first to spot Lake Michigan through the trees (harder than it sounds in full leaf), counting the spots where branches close into a true tunnel overhead, and first to find the stove legs on the Legs Inn roof at the end. Winner picks the ice cream stop back in Harbor Springs. Low-stakes bribery, undefeated since we started keeping score.
The turnaround rule: decide before you leave that any point on this road is an acceptable place to call it. If the backseat falls apart at Good Hart, then pot pie, a quick beach run, and home is the trip — a complete one. The road isn’t going anywhere, and the fast inland route gets you home in under half an hour from anywhere on it.
The half-day rhythm that works
Leave mid-morning. Let Pond Hill soak up the first hour of energy, drive the canopy while moods are still high, reset at Good Hart, swim near Cross Village, then either an early Legs Inn dinner or the fast inland road home for a late lunch. That’s a relaxed three to four hours with everyone still smiling — not a forced sit.
And if the day frays — weather, a missed nap, a mood — home base is minutes away, which is the quiet luxury of staying this close to where the road begins. The afternoon recovers on the porch, and you try again another day.
“We plan this drive around the backseat, not the scenery. The scenery has never once melted down.”
Stay where families come back year after year
The Bird House sleeps 11 in a woodland setting between Harbor Springs and Petoskey — five bedrooms, three baths, an open porch, and a fire pit out back, about 3 minutes from where M-119 begins.
Check Bird House availability