By foot or by paddle? With new kayaking tours by All About Water and hiking and biking options hosted by sbd Tours, anyone with a will to work for their wonderful view of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore can have their pick of adventures.
Leelanau County residents and those visiting our shores a year ago definitely know where they were when the storm hit. Where they took shelter, what they saw, and how they helped others in the minutes, hours and days after the megastorm pummeled Glen Arbor and the Sleeping Bear Dunes minutes after 4 p.m. last August 2 is now part of our personal narrative.
Here’s your guide to Leelanau County golf courses, past and present, with a little inside info from a few avid local golfers. Part one of our two-part series looks at the courses closest to Glen Arbor and Empire. In the next edition, we will expand to Leland, Northport and Suttons Bay.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore officials worry that the Platte River party scene has reached a pitch where, if left unchecked, could spell disaster: a child cutting their feet on a broken beer bottle; a drunken reveler passing out and drowning in the river, a pedestrian hit by a moving vehicle on Lake Michigan Road, where the speed limit remains 55 miles per hour—even near the mouth of the river where cars line the road for half a mile on hot summer weekends.
Beth Bricker and Cherrie Stege are sisters. They created an art gallery in Glen Arbor. And, their mother may have been a wood elf. What? Ananda Bricker, Cherrie and Beth’s late mother, lived in the woods here, in both the spiritual and literal senses of that verb. It was her natural habitat, and the flowers were her familiars.
On July 19, Glen Arbor will welcome “Gem Hunter” Gary Bowersox who will speak at a special Tea Talk in the garden of Becky Thatcher Designs.
The streets of downtown Glen Arbor are packed these days with tourists, beachgoers, and shoppers. The tills hum at apparel shops, rented bikes and kayaks roll off the assembly line at Crystal River Outfitters, and there’s a hungry line out the door at Art’s Tavern. But “help wanted” signs on storefronts, restaurant entrances and social media appeals, have become as ubiquitous in our tourism boomtowns — in Glen Arbor and up and down the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Bay Wear celebrates three generations and 25 years By Sue Mabee Jameson Sun contributor The rule was that your chin had to reach above the counter before you could start working. When I was a child, my dad and his brother, Richard, had 13 “Jumpin Jeans” stores north of Detroit. In 1975, when I was […]
Kathleen Bittner wears a garland of amber around her collar like a regal monarch, and her light eyes peer out happily behind delicate black frames as she welcomes customers into her store. She’s the benevolent queen of her domain, the Polish Art Center, and knows her kingdom well. Point to an object, and she’ll tell you the folk history, from which part of Poland it originates, and how it works. As Bittner watches her customers poke around the food section of her store, she doesn’t hesitate to call merrily, “Try one! They’re on my counter! You can try one, they’re delicious. It’s apricot marmalade. It’s really, really good.”
In 2016 there are 14 art galleries in Glen Arbor and Empire, as well as innumerable creative people practicing their craft in the privacy of a home studio. It was not always this way. The locality’s first art gallery was established in 1985, and up until that point, the Glen Arbor/Empire art scene might have been more accurately characterized as an art vignette. But with the arrival of Glen Lake Artists Gallery (GLA Gallery), the foundation was laid for today’s perception of the Greater Glen Lake Area as a place that attracts art and craft makers.