Meet Glen Arbor’s ski bum/chef Josh Miller

By Norm Wheeler

Sun editor

You can pretty much read the story of Josh Miller’s life on the back of his Subaru. It is plastered with decals for ski gear companies, and that has been his passion and then winter occupation for 44 of his 47 years. But then your eyes track downward to the license plate: PORKRST, and you recognize the meat master, grill-meister, and talented chef that is Josh Miller for the rest of the year. The way he manages to balance two jobs is typical of so many workers who are the year-round residents in this seasonal feast or famine land of Leelanau.

A graduate of Glen Lake’s class of 1991, Josh was cooking full time at the Good Harbor Grill in Glen Arbor by ’95. He spent seven summers there in that incarnation, then took a job at Camps Leelanau & Kohahna. After seven years of learning the ropes working under Kevin McCarty, Josh became the executive chef for another nine years. It turned out to be a busy 16 years of his life. “We were serving 220,000 meals per year,” Josh marvels. “During fall, winter, and spring the Leelanau Outdoor Center has school groups of 50-100 students coming for three or four days during several weeks each season, then summer camp would always be 200 campers and 50 staff to feed. We were serving everyone three meals a day, seven days a week.” Josh was in charge of all food orders and production as well as a staff that included four cooks, three cook’s helpers, and four dishwashers.

During his tenure at Leelanau/Kohahna (LOC), Josh gathered some nice memories. “We got to meet and hang with the MSU Track & Cross Country coach Walter Drenth when he would bring his team up for sports camp every August,” Josh recalls.  “He got us tickets to MSU basketball games a couple of times. Then one year Tom Izzo came with his daughter’s school and stayed here at camp as one of the chaperones.” And then there was the day of the evacuation. “We had a field fire along Port Oneida Road. It jumped to our side of the road and the camp was filled with smoke, so we had to evacuate maybe 250 people in the middle of the day.” But not to worry: “We loaded everybody on the big blue camp busses and took them to Little Glen to swim.” By the time they returned to camp, the fire was out.

And, of course, the biggest connection Josh made there was with SarahJane Ritter, who worked at LOC then. Now a teacher at Glen Lake, SarahJane Ritter Miller is Josh’s wife, and they live in the middle of Maple City. Their wedding was a fine and joyous celebration right there in the Great House at Camps Leelanau & Kohahna.

Josh left in 2017 and became a butcher at Anderson’s Market in downtown Glen Arbor under the tutelage of Clint Couturier. There he cut meat, made soups and meals-to-go, and was part of a staff that numbers 25 in the off-season and at least 40 in the summer. But the pull of the Good Harbor Grill never let him go, and now Josh is the dinner chef in the familiar purple eatery on Western Avenue. “We feature steak specials, along with whitefish, salmon, ahi, tune, and mahi mahi,” Josh explains.

When the snow starts to fly, Josh Miller turns back into a ski bum. “I’ve skied since I was three years old,” he remembers. “We try to go on at least one big ski trip every year. Right now I help my friends Rick Andresen and Patty as a rep for Atomic and Salomon ski companies. We gather at Boyne Mountain every year for the Midwest Reps Association meetings. Fifty companies come to show off their new skis, and vendors from five states come to try them out for three days. I give reports on-hill and on-camera that are shown on skis.com.”

About the future Josh can only muse. “When the Grill shuts down for winter, I guess I’d like to find a full-time year round job, but that’s hard in the County. I might go back to teaching skiing at Crystal Mountain for my 30th year with the Professional Ski Instructors of America.”

Josh has another distinction that is particularly important to the Glen Arbor Sun. When Jacob Wheeler started publishing the Sunwith the tech savvy help of his friend Richard Taber 24 years ago, they asked Josh to design a masthead. “Jacob said he needed a basic line drawing including Glen Arbor in some way.” So Josh created the view of the Dunes and Sleeping Bear Bay at sunset that continues to be our recognizable visual logo to this day. Josh is a man of many talents!

Josh Miller’s final thoughts for this profile include this message to Glen Arbor’s many summer visitors: “Most of the places to eat in Glen Arbor are first-come, first-served. We love our locals, and we love the big summer posse. We see people get frustrated because sometimes they want their food quicker than we can cook it. Our kitchen has no AC, so it reaches 130 degrees on the hottest days. So please, be patient with how busy we are and how hot we are!” 

You can taste Josh Miller’s dinner creations at the Good Harbor Grill, where 20 employees under the leadership of Cos Burrows and Cady Hall also work the Pine Cone and the new Glen Arbor Bakery right next door.