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Seaweed body wraps with imported essences from Bali; Moroccan rose oil manicures; Tahitian techniques for massage. The pages of many spa brochures read like veritable travelogues, promising to take you away from your everyday cares.
But some spas find exotic inspiration closer to home, forgoing the faux French route in favor of the unique relaxation inducements and ingredients right in their backyards around Lake Michigan. They rely on everything from the cool water of a Wisconsin lake to delectable Michigan cherries, all in the service of relaxation and rejuvenation.
Guests at these area spas rejuvenate with treatments that utilize ingredients native to the Lake Michigan shore.
“We felt it was important to be indigenous to the area,” says Mary Quinn, executive director of the Heartland Spa in Gilman, Ill. “I tease some of the other spas. Some spas closer to the oceans have sea salt scrubs, and those in the mountains have red clay scrubs. I joke with them, saying we do a manure wrap.”
Though the Heartland Spa and bed and breakfast once was an old dairy farm — and there’s still plenty of farmland in its environs — the organic essentials for its treatments involve anything but excrement. Instead, their signature pedicure, the milk and honey pedicure, bathes spa-goers’ feet in a bath of fresh milk, followed by a scrub of milk and honey and then finished with a honey and butter blended moisturizer.
As it sits among soybean fields, it seems only natural that Heartland also offers a signature soy facial. “The soybean is a rich lipid lubricant, and it repairs skin cells,” Quinn says. “It smoothes out rough skin, and it’s great for dry or dehydrated skin.” (For contact information on all spas, see box on p. 95.)
Visionary treatments for the new Aspira Spa at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake, Wis., come not from nearby farms, but instead from the lake’s indigenous roots.
“We researched treatments that were developed around the world, but for our signature treatment, we took inspiration from the seers of a local Native American tribe, who hold the waters of the lake to be healing and sacred,” says Lola Roeh, general manager for the Osthoff Resort and Aspira Spa, which just opened in February.
Aspira’s “sacred waters spa experience” works on muscle tension, which dissolves as the healing warmth of the spring-fed water penetrates the deep tissues of the body. A massage therapist also works a marine-based cream masque into the skin, and the treatment is finished by a therapeutic bath for balance. This two-hour-plus treatment is offered only in the spa’s private suites, which look out onto the lake. The spa also offers a shorter sacred waters massage. “I believe that this treatment is not offered anywhere else, and it will be a truly memorable experience,” Roeh says.
One of Michigan’s most famed crops contributes to a meaningful spa experience at the Crown Jewel Spa in Grand Rapids, with its hallmarked line of treatments. The spa offers a cherries jubilee wrap, as well as a cherry pedicure and cherry manicure, and spa-goers receive a bowl of fresh cherries or dried cherries and chocolates, depending on the season.
“When I was developing my spa, I really wanted to do something local to Michigan,” says Julie Salisbury, spa owner. “The cherries wrap smells really nice and very decadent, yet at the same time it’s a mild scent — it’s not too overpowering. It’s lovely, and the smell stays with you all day.”
The blushing red fruit is crushed up for treatments, making its antioxidant properties more readily absorbable by the skin, and after the wrap or feet and hands treatments, cherry oil-scented lotion is liberally applied. “Some research suggests that cherries are helpful in treating arthritis and stiffness,” Salisbury says. “The cherry scrub also exfoliates the skin. All of our treatments are tailored to our guests’ specific needs, and we don’t rush them. Our cherry pedicure, for example, is one and a half hours long.”
Cherries and Michigan’s other fine berries also find their way into the treatments at the Greenery Spa in Richland, Mich. A sour cherry mask is featured in summer facials, and there’s a special blueberry wrap called “Blueberry Smoothie.” “Our goal is to be seasonal,” says Emily Lennen, owner of the spa, which is celebrating its first anniversary this August. “We like to come up with special scrubs and treatments that are not only specific to the area, but we also like to keep things in tune with the seasons.”
The spa, located in an old brick schoolhouse built in 1889, offers new specials regularly. In March, for example, mint pedicures and “Top of the Morning” packages are featured, and September ushers in brown sugar- and cinnamon-based treatments. The cherry and blueberry treatments are offered as a summer special. “Blueberries are a natural antioxidant, and they detoxify the body,” Lennen says. “Then, after experiencing the blueberry wrap, our guests are applied with a very nice lotion to finish the treatment and then use our relaxing Vichy shower to rinse it all away.”
Rinsing away cares is one of the goals of the water treatments at the Kohler Waters Spa in Kohler, Wis., but the recently remodeled spa’s latest aqua offering might be a bit more shocking to newbie spa-goers. In fact, the “Cooler by the Lake” treatment is not recommended for those faint of heart.
“For a long time, we have educated our guests on the therapeutic benefits of submerging oneself in a warm whirlpool for several minutes and then going into the cool plunge pool,” says Jean Kolb, director of wellness business for Kohler Co.
“We applied this knowledge to a specialty water treatment.”
What that means is that the recipient of this regimen is subjected to alternating temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit and 65 degrees Fahrenheit, which directs the flow of circulation. “The two in combination simultaneously really make for a very calming, relaxing effect on the body,” Kolb says.
But it’s not quite as relaxing as, say, a traditional hot water treatment — even though warmth, be it water or hot stones, is always there while ice is massaged into the body or jolts of cool water are sprayed. “One of our therapists says it reminded her of jumping into Lake Michigan on a hot summer day,” Kolb says. “You take a deep breath when you resurface, and you have an exhilarating feeling when you’re finished.”
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