Celebrate family fun on the Fourth of July

Leelanau Vacation Realty owner Ranae Ihme (middle), her daughter Nadia (left) and Janai Misner (right) line up in Glen Haven for Glen Arbor’s Fourth of July parade. Photo from 2024 parade by Jacob Kurtz

From staff reports

The joy commences when the parade lines up at 10:30 am in the historic maritime village of Glen Haven; it builds along M-109 as children shout and wave, and it crescendos when the force of floats, classic cars, boats on trailers, and fire trucks arrive shortly after noon to delight the throngs of thousands gathered along the roadside in downtown Glen Arbor.

Following the vehicles on foot is a Leelanau County version of a New Orleans Second Line Parade: a trumpeter, a kazoo corps, kids tossing newspapers, Elvis impersonators, environmental nonprofit volunteers, and activists whose handmade signs and electioneering messages remind us that the Fourth of July most certainly is a political holiday—an anniversary of a subversive, dangerous, and revolutionary act that shook the world—and whose founding document boasts a core message that seems more relevant today than ever.

(Remember the original “boat rockers” at your barbecues, beach picnics, and pontoon flotilla parties on the Glen Lakes)

Glen Arbor’s Fourth of July parade is also a joyful celebration of community and an opportunity to honor those who are sewn into the town’s fabric.

This year’s honorary grand marshal is Carol Worsley, a celebrated chef and owner of the Thyme Inn bed and breakfast who has lived at least of part of the year in Glen Arbor for more than 60 years. As per tradition, Worsley will ride in a convertible at the front of the parade.

A graduate of fine cooking schools including Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Worsley worked under famed chef and author Julia Child. She has drawn acclaim for her gourmet cooking at Thyme Inn, a onetime antique shop on the west side of Glen Arbor, which she and her late husband Don purchased in 1997.

“I’ve stayed at probably a hundred B&B’s all over the USA and Europe. This is number one,” frequent guest Russ Douglas told the Sun in 2013. “I mean, where else can you go and be surrounded by European antiques and a gourmet kitchen, and be served a three-course breakfast that’s fit for a king? It’s just—it’s fabulous.”

Worsley’s former pastry shop and deli Thyme Out is now Inn & Trail Gourmet and owned by sisters Corinne Cochran and Annabel Moore. She was featured in Emita Brady Hill’s 2020 book Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming (Wayne State University Press).

Carol Worsley boasts another, more dubious claim to fame in Glen Arbor. She was almost the town’s only fatality during the infamous August 2, 2015, windstorm.

On that memorable Sunday afternoon, Worsley was in her office above the detached garage at Thyme Inn when the air suddenly changed.

“I noticed that the wind stopped, and it got almost pitch black, so I decided to finish my paperwork in the kitchen,” she told the Sun. As she was gathering up her items “I thought I heard someone yell ‘GO!’ like my mother when she was mad. I dashed to the stairs, got part-way down, and then the tree crashed and the wind blew and I was thrown down the stairs.”

Worsley struck her head but did not break anything, and she got out of the garage only to see that it was cut in half by a century-old oak tree that landed right where her desk stood. Battered and bruised, Carol was grateful that she was not—what she joked—“Glen Arbor’s only fatality. I feel very lucky!” Days later, she still had a headache and went to Traverse City for an MRI to make sure she sustained no hidden damage.

On the Fourth of July, this acclaimed chef and storm survivor will ride in the front of the parade.