It's a perennial topic of debate to define the borders of Up North. Growing up in Bay City, the border was generally agreed to be Clare - or Tawas if following

It's a perennial topic of debate to define the borders of Up North. Growing up in Bay City, the border was generally agreed to be Clare - or Tawas if following the coast. It was a source of some amusement to learn that many Detroit residents considered Bay City to be Up North. The source of the confusion is that Up North is actually shorthand for "my family's favorite vacation spot". There are some rules to the classification - Traverse City and Charlevoix are unambiguously Up North for example, and the Upper Peninsula is so utterly North that the designation "Up North" can seem a bit ridiculous, so it gets its own term - The U.P. Anyway, this is all to say that no one has ever in the history of Michigan referred to Grand Rapids as "Up North". Certainly not on a latitudinal argument. But the author appears to be from Chicago, so perhaps it's her family's personal Up North.