On a seven-acre plot above Little Traverse Lake in Leelanau County, two cedar-clad cabins rent to travelers who want a design-forward base within reach of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The property is called Parcel, and it sits near Maple City in the northwestern Lower Peninsula, roughly four hours from Detroit. Guests can book a single cabin or take over the whole site.
The project debuted in fall 2024. According to Domino magazine, which featured the cabins, Parcel was conceived during the pandemic by Brooklyn-based Lindsay Giambattista Cox and photographer Chris Cox, working with architect Matt Moffitt of Studio Bardo. The result reads as Scandinavian design filtered through northern Michigan, with cedar exteriors and interiors that lean bright and spare.
Two cabins, two moods
The Meadow Cabin sleeps six and is built around a large kitchen and dining space meant for gathering. The Forest Cabin sleeps four and was framed, in Domino’s telling, as a space for the artist, positioned to catch soft northern light through tall windows in the tree canopy. Both cabins carry full kitchens, wood-burning stoves and loft sleeping in addition to main-floor bedrooms.
The finishes are specific rather than generic rustic. Domino reports the cabins use Durat countertops made from post-consumer plastic in saturated colors, Pella windows, and heated bathroom floors throughout. Furnishings run toward vintage and contemporary design pieces rather than lodge cliches. There are no televisions on the property.
What is on the grounds
Beyond the two structures, the site is set up to keep guests outside and largely self-contained. A concrete-block sauna with a cedar interior is tucked into the woods, and a boardwalk leads down to a private stretch of Little Traverse Lake waterfront. An outdoor kitchen anchored by a fireplace and a built-in parrilla grill, the Argentine-style open grill, sits near the cabins. Wooded trails and an outdoor shower round out the grounds. Cookware, linens, coffee and books come stocked.
How to book
Parcel takes reservations through its own site at parcelfriends.co, which routes to a listings page, and the cabins also appear on Airbnb under the Parcel name in Maple City. Children are welcome; pets are not. Nightly rates shift by season and by whether a guest books one cabin or the full property, so the current figure is best confirmed at the time of booking rather than quoted secondhand.
For Detroiters, Parcel fits a specific kind of trip: a long weekend closer to Traverse City and the Sleeping Bear coastline, in lodging built as much for how it looks and feels as for where it sits. It is not a budget cabin, and it does not pretend to be. It is a designed object you can sleep in, on a lake most Michiganders have never heard of.