By Pat Stinson Sun contributor In January, as snowshoe hares bound across Thoreson Road and minks skirt a frozen wetland at the foot of Alligator Hill, northern Michigan black bears snooze in their dens, tucked into secret places throughout the Upper (U.P.) and northern Lower Peninsulas. During this month, one of nature’s most intriguing phenomena […]
In this picture, the Velis boys take the plunge into Empire’s South Bar Lake. Photo by Ryan Romeike Empire will hold its famed Winterfest on Feb. 13-15 (visit www.empirechamber.com for information), and Glen Arbor will hold its own frigid fiesta on Saturday, Feb. 14 with a perch-fishing contest from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and […]
Photo by Bruce Hood By Joe Blondia Sun contributor If regular fishing has been described as a jerk on one end of a line waiting for a jerk on the other, how would ice fishing be defined? Some people think you would have to add the word “crazy” to that definition. Ice fishing can be […]
From staff reports Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service) Superintendent Dusty Schultz signed the Park’s new General Management Plan (GMP) on Jan. 5 in a brief ceremony in the Lakeshore’s Visitor Center in Empire. Because the Lakeshore was signed into law in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, Schultz […]
While having served the communities well for nearly a century, the new bridge will offer wider lanes, space for cyclists and pedestrians, and a lower-level fishing area. Aesthetically, it will be quite similar to the new bridge at the Mill on M-22 (by County Road 675). Structurally, it will be a heftier bridge, due to […]
Chris Skellenger, a local musician, gardener and humanitarian, is spending part of this winter in Lesotho, a small landlocked African nation surrounded entirely by South Africa. With his nonprofit organization, 11 Oaks, Skellenger promotes bucket drip irrigation in barren and dry Lesotho. As Nadine Gilmer reported in her profile of Skellenger in the August 9, […]
By Pat Stinson Sun contributor The delicious taste of shagbark hickory nuts — sometimes described as a cross between a black walnut or brazil nut and a pecan — was introduced to me by a friend who moved to Maple City from Springport, Mich., near Jackson. He said he had never tasted another nut that […]
Photo courtesy of Lorraine Tufts, National Park Service From Leelanau.com, April 1, 2004 The village of Glen Arbor was stunned today when Mishe-Mokwa (the “Sleeping Bear”) woke up! The 52.3-foot mother bear had been sleeping for several thousand years and apparently woke up very hungry and cranky. While most of the residents fled in panic […]
By Mary Sharry For the song of the bird and the hum of the bee; heavenly father I thank thee. This was the prayer my mother suggested I use when I was frightened of such things — birds and bees, although there are no bees in this story.
… and with it, the Glen Arbor Sun will go into hibernation until mid-January, when we emerge from a turkey and eggnog-induced snooze to let you know how cold it is in the north woods, who around town has frost bite and who doesn’t, who is frolicking in the Florida Keys and who is stuck […]