Entries by editor

Field of Screams Annual Haunted Hayride

Travel through the haunted forest on a tractor-pulled haywagon. Enjoy eerie theatrics, startling events, ghouls and spooks. Everyone is welcome, small children at parents discretion. Celebtrate Halloween with a night of fright! Two Fridays and two Saturdays before Halloween: October 20, 21, 27 and 28 from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. each night. $10 per victim, […]

Village Connector is quick and cheap

Schedule bus service provided by BATA has finally reached the Empire-Glen Arbor-Maple City-Cedar area. With four buses each day, and pickups in each of those villages and also at The Homestead and Glen Lake School, it is easy to move around this part of the county, and to reach Traverse City.

Will the Lake Street boat ramp move to Glen Haven?

By Jacob Wheeler Sun editor High summer means a bottleneck of car and pedestrian traffic in downtown Glen Arbor, and nowhere is the problem more acute than at the north end of Lake Street, where the public boat ramp, Le Bear Resort and sunset watchers all compete for breathing space. For years now the Glen […]

Seep in tranquility with Great Lakes Tea and Spice

By Maggie Meyers Sun contributor August 19 marked the fiftieth day of business for the Great Lakes Tea and Spice Company, a promising new addition to Glen Arbor’s business community. Snugly situated in a quiet enclave near the Ruth Conklin Gallery on M-109 and tucked directly behind the Sleeping Bear Animal Clinic, the Tea and […]

Is the Rescue found?

From staff reports State police divers searching for the body of a man who drowned in Big Glen Lake last summer may have instead solved one of the area’s great mysteries — the location of Ralph Dorsey’s passenger steamboat, Rescue, which he sank intentionally in 1914.

A new breed of Leelanau farmer

By F. Josephine Arrowood Sun contributor In an era of declining family farms, both in Leelanau County and nationally, it seems almost astonishing to encounter individuals willing to carry on the ancient and honorable traditions of tilling the soil and caring for animals. Maple City sheep farmer Alesha Ashley — intelligent, energetic, and determined — […]

Collegiate stars endure preseason training on our dunes

By Maggie Meyers and Jacob Wheeler Sun contributors Late August is the time to think about returning to school — stock up on notebooks, pens and lunchboxes, and after months of sleeping in, actually obey the alarm clock and make a mad dash outside to catch the yellow bus. Or for college athletes, especially those […]

The Petty’s departure is ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler Sun editor It’s the end of an era at The Leelanau School in Glen Arbor as Duane and Fiffy Petty are heading to Wichita, Kansas. Since 1990 both Pettys have been fixtures at the private high school from which all three of their children, Jason, Michael, and Erin, graduated. In more than […]

Dropping pounds like they’re going out of fashion

From staff reports Linda Ihme posed the challenge last winter, and Dave Baxter answered. The proprietor of Leelanau Vacation Rentals promised a free elliptical machine to the employee who could lose the most weight between January 1 and July 1, and all winter and spring the slimmer-trimmer Dave resisted offers of free beer and pizza […]

From China to Empire, diplomats make a local home

By Helen Westie Sun contributor A diplomat couple residing in Beijing is the new owners of the former Bed and Breakfast on South Bar Lake just off LaCore Road in Empire. Bruce Quinn and Teresa Howes, former attaches at the American Embassy in Beijing, purchased the property from William and Susan Chamby, who bought the […]