A new National Park Service report shows that 1,531,560 visitors to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2012 spent nearly $152 million in communities near the Park. That spending supported 2,818 jobs in the local area.
The next Empire Area Community Emergency Fund Concert will be held on Sunday, March 2, from 4-6 p.m. at Art’s Tavern in Glen Arbor with a featured performance by “Good Boy”. Learn more about how the Empire Area Emergency Fund is helping anonymous local individuals in need.
Tom Skowronski from Leelanau County’s Office of Emergency Management sent an email this morning to Northern Michigan media, warning that ice caves on Gill’s Pier Road between Leland and Northport are no longer safe to visit.
In the Talk About Art series Sarah Bearup-Neal conducts live interviews with local and regional artists about their art making and thinking. These insightful interviews take place monthly at 7:30 p.m., at the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) at no charge.
Check out this video, provided by Friends of Sleeping Bear’s Kerry Kelly, of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail’s grooming machine at work. The conditions are great, so get out there and cross-country ski!
Stormcloud Brewing Company and The Garden Theater, neighboring businesses in downtown Frankfort, are pleased to announce the inaugural Dark & Stormcloudy Film Series celebrating the best of dark comedies paired with a hand crafted dark beer brewed specially for the movie selection. The series commences on Thursday, Feb. 20 and runs for five weeks ending on March 20 with a weekly tapping of the new beer at 4 p.m. the day of the program.
Escape from the winter blues at the 14th annual Glen Arbor Winterfest on Saturday, Feb. 15. Festivities start at 7 a.m. with the beginning of the Perch Fishing Contest, with prizes for forest through fourth place catches. All participants will bring their biggest catches from Big and Little Glen to the Sportsman Shop at 1 p.m., and winners will be crowned. Entry fee for this event is $20, and all ages are welcome to participate.
Mark Evans is nothing if not determined. The eco-tourism guide and explorer has led expeditions deep into the wild to view grizzly bears in British Columbia and whales in Antarctica, and has developed canopy walks in the Australian outback. Evans, who was raised in South Africa and lives in Canada, now has his eyes set on Leelanau County’s forests and the arboreal view of the Glen Lakes.
Eighteen Leelanau County-based businesses will receive grants of $1,000 or $1,250 through the county’s Business Grant Program. The 18 businesses were selected from more than 60 applications received by a review committee charged with dispersing remaining funds from the recent dissolution of the Leelanau County Economic Development Corp. in the form of small grants to county-based businesses.
The League of Women Voters Leelanau County (LWVLC) Energy Committee will host a public forum on “Community Energy Resilience: How do we achieve it?” Tuesday evening February 25 from 6-9 p.m. in the Leelanau County Government Center. The League’s goal is to create community conversations related to saving energy, generating electricity, and learning how “less can be more”, all related to building resilience in the face of energy issues that are and will continue to impact our community.