New Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail empowers young and old, enabled and disabled

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

The sixth grade class from Grand Rapids Christian School almost didn’t bring Sophie, a student with Down Syndrome, when it made an annual pilgrimage to DH Day Campground earlier this month. School administrators were concerned that Sophie wouldn’t be able to take part in the “up north” activities that her classmates would enjoy: hiking the dunes, swimming in Lake Michigan, biking into Glen Arbor for ice cream.

To the Grand Rapids students’ surprise, they discovered the newly completed section of the Sleeping Heritage Trail running through the campground, offering them an easy and safe way to reach town without setting foot in an automobile. Sophie, too, with the help of a caregiver and a three-wheeled stroller, enjoyed a spin through nature en route to Glen Arbor.

Phase One of the Heritage Trail, a paved, 10-foot-wide multi-use trail, which runs from the Dune Climb to Glen Arbor, is the first leg of what supporters envision will one day be a 27-mile trail from the Leelanau-Benzie County Line running north to Good Harbor Bay. Though it has been operational for over a month, the Heritage Trail’s official grand opening is scheduled for June 20 at 1:30 p.m. at the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb.

“I don’t think we fully realized the magnitude of the handicapped to use this trail,” says Cherry Republic President and avid supporter Bob Sutherland. “It’s heartwarming to see that.”

Sutherland, his wife Stephanie and their sons Hawthorn and Colebrook, use the trail nearly every other day, he estimates. “Hawthorn has made it all the way (from Glen Arbor) to the dunes. He feels independent and charged, and he sleeps well at night, which is great for me as a father.”

Enjoyment of the trail bridges generations, Sutherland adds. “On Memorial Day weekend I saw three generations of a family doing activities together on the trail. The grandmother was using a rolling walker and the kids kept saying, ‘just another half mile, Grandma’. They believed she could continue because of the flatness, beauty and safety of the trail.”

Stories of the elderly or people with disabilities using the trail are all over town. That’s music to the ears of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, TART Trails and local citizens and business owners who have collaborated to make the Heritage Trail a reality.

Park deputy superintendent Tom Ulrich learned of a man who rides a recumbent bike following an injury. His wife wouldn’t let him ride the bike on the shoulders of state highways M-22 and M-109, but now he can ride daily, and safely, on the Heritage Trail.

“These are folks with disabilities who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to have this outdoor experience without the trail and its hard surface,” says Ulrich. “People on walkers are grateful for the smooth, easily negotiable surface.”

Empire, Port Oneida next

Now that the much-anticipated Dune Climb-to-Glen Arbor phase is complete, the Heritage Trail powers-that-be will focus on Phase 2, which will run from the Dune Climb to Empire, parallel to M-109 and M-22. TART Trails has already secured the money needed for construction, but needs to raise approximately $400,000 for the project’s design and engineering. Once the money is generated, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) could build Phase 2 as early as next spring.

“You can already look south from the Dune Climb and see the orange stakes marking where the trail will go,” says TART Trails development director Pam Darling. “Our hope is that MDOT will get it in their cue and construct it in 2013.”

Following the Empire phase, the Heritage Trail will expand northeast, from Glen Arbor to the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. TART Trails has already raised the $200,000 needed for construction of Phase 3. By 2014, if all goes according to plan, the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail could stretch 13 miles — half of its eventual length — from Empire to Port Oneida. (Meanwhile, citizens opposed to the placement of the trail’s planned Good Harbor route have launched an effort to divert it. Read about their effort in a future edition of the Sun.)

For now, though, the attention falls on fundraising. Sutherland, Ulrich and Darling agree that the completed and oft-used Phase 1 may be the Heritage Trail’s best selling point. Meanwhile, efforts are in place to keep visibility on the trail, and on the $400,000 needed to move forward.

General Motors has donated a new Chevy Volt — appropriately outfitted with a bike rack — which will be on display at the June 20 grand opening at the Dune Climb. Some time thereafter, the Heritage Trail fundraising committee will hold a raffle for the electric car, and sell 1,200 tickets at $100 apiece. Meanwhile, Cherry Republic features an “inaudible auction” in its weekly Orchard Report e-newsletter, which reaches approximately 50,000 subscribers (Sutherland intends for Cherry Republic to donate $40,000 this year). In Empire, Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate will unveil a Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail chocolate bar later this month, 25 percent of the proceeds from which will fund the Empire phase of the trail.

“Our campaign cabinet has reached out to the Empire and Glen Arbor Chambers, but the challenge is to figure out how to capture the attention of all our summer visitors,” explains Darling.

That challenge might not be as difficult as she thinks. The Heritage Trail, and Leelanau County as a biking destination in general, is already generating plenty of attention outside the immediate communities.

The Lansing-based Tri-County Bicycle Association, which financially supported the Heritage Trail last year, is visiting the Indigo Bluffs RV resort near Empire, June 13-17, and its 200 riders are touring northern Michigan on bikes. Darling adds for emphasis, “Indigo Bluffs is 100 percent sold out to cyclists!” In addition, the new US Bicycle Route 35, which stretches from South Bend, Ind., to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, and runs up the west coast of Michigan and through Empire and Glen Arbor, enjoyed a formal ribbon cutting on May 19.

The message is clear: the bikers are on their way. TART Trails hopes their donations to the Heritage Trail are coming too.

Not all locals agree with the placement, size and construction of the trail. In its next edition, the Sun will feature the concerns of some Empire residents who have mixed feelings about Phase 2 of the trail about to be built near their backyards. And some have vocally opposed the decision to pave the trail and to make it 10 feet wide (with two-foot borders on each side). Follow the online debate here.

But the Park’s Tom Ulrich is adamant that Phase 1 of the trail has expanded biking opportunities for his family and others, young and old.

“I’ve walked and biked it with my seven-months pregnant wife and 20-month old daughter on a bike trailer. There’s no way I’d take either of them on bikes on M-22 or M-109.”