Middle Village & the Church on the Shore — a stop on the Tunnel of Trees.
Just off the road to your left is Middle Village, and it holds one of the most quietly affecting places on this drive.
There is a small white church here — Holy Childhood of Jesus — and beside it a cemetery, and behind the cemetery, the beach. The graves look out over Lake Michigan.
This was one of the principal Odawa settlements along L'Arbre Croche, and a mission was established here in the eighteen hundreds. The community that grew around it was Odawa and Catholic together, which is its own complicated history — missions in this era were bound up with pressure to abandon language and custom, and that pressure was real. And at the same time, people made this place their own and their descendants are buried in that ground.
Walk down to the water if you stop. It is one of the few easy beach accesses on this road, and the view north along the bluff is lovely.
And if you go into the cemetery, go quietly and read the names. Many are Odawa family names still carried by people living a few miles from here. This is an active burial ground for a living community, not a monument.
Then back to the road, and the best curves are just ahead.