We initially had a trip planned to Hawaii Oahu but we ended up postponing to next year and did a road trip across Lake Michigan from Chicago going through 4 states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin and we had a great time. Michigan has got lots of natural beauty and outdoor activities.
Stopped at small quaint beautiful towns along the way and lots of fun activities for my active 11 year old such as sand boarding, alpine rides, river tubing along the Platter River ending in Lake Michigan, playing on sand dunes at Silver Lake Dunes and Sleeping Bear Dunes etc.
Learned a lot of fascinating facts including of a small town called Singapore Michigan which was a thriving lumber town that got swallowed up the the dunes and is still under the sand today: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/07/17/singapore-michigan-ghost-town-logging-kalamazoo-river/85204433007/
The dunes are so steep that it's a serious hike getting back up and many people end up needing to be rescued so they installed signs sanding people of $3k find if you need to be rescued lol, needless to say we didn't try to go down.
We drove all the up to an historic island called Mackinac Island on the upper northern end of Michigan where no cars are allowed so you have to move about by walking, cycling or horse carriages. Fun fact even Amazon deliver using horses which was cool.
Then we drove back the other way stopping in Green Bay Wisconsin and then back to Chicago.
Fun fact: Lake Michigan is so big that it is 37 times larger than Greater London, we needed up driving over 1100 miles around the Lake.
Back to planning Hawaii trip for next year.