2009 Empire Asparagus Festival recipe winners

Courtesy of organizer Dianne Navarro First place: Asparagus Breakfast Pizza By Traci Apsey 16 oz. bag tater tots 1 bunch asparagus 6 to 8 eggs Bacon cooked 1 C Parmesan cheese fresh Cook tater tots in a large pan on stove press to form a crust. Add eggs, bacon and asparagus. Cover and cook on […]

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An Inauguration too big for words

The significance of Obama’s coronation Tuesday was overwhelming; waving goodbye to Bush, on the other hand, was an emotion much easier to measure By Jacob Wheeler Sun editor WASHINGTON D.C.—All night and all morning, trickles of people turned to streams, flowing out of Metro stops and Greyhound buses, through tunnels and down city streets. Those […]

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In search of the sleeping bear

By Pat Stinson Sun contributor In January, as snowshoe hares bound across Thoreson Road and minks skirt a frozen wetland at the foot of Alligator Hill, northern Michigan black bears snooze in their dens, tucked into secret places throughout the Upper (U.P.) and northern Lower Peninsulas. During this month, one of nature’s most intriguing phenomena […]

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Winter Fun!

In this picture, the Velis boys take the plunge into Empire’s South Bar Lake. Photo by Ryan Romeike Empire will hold its famed Winterfest on Feb. 13-15 (visit www.empirechamber.com for information), and Glen Arbor will hold its own frigid fiesta on Saturday, Feb. 14 with a perch-fishing contest from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and […]

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Winter’s “hard water” sport

Photo by Bruce Hood By Joe Blondia Sun contributor If regular fishing has been described as a jerk on one end of a line waiting for a jerk on the other, how would ice fishing be defined? Some people think you would have to add the word “crazy” to that definition. Ice fishing can be […]

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Park signs General Management Plan

From staff reports Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (the local branch of the National Park Service) Superintendent Dusty Schultz signed the Park’s new General Management Plan (GMP) on Jan. 5 in a brief ceremony in the Lakeshore’s Visitor Center in Empire. Because the Lakeshore was signed into law in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, Schultz […]

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‘Ya can’t get theuh from heuh’

While having served the communities well for nearly a century, the new bridge will offer wider lanes, space for cyclists and pedestrians, and a lower-level fishing area. Aesthetically, it will be quite similar to the new bridge at the Mill on M-22 (by County Road 675). Structurally, it will be a heftier bridge, due to […]

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Letter from Lesotho:

Chris Skellenger, a local musician, gardener and humanitarian, is spending part of this winter in Lesotho, a small landlocked African nation surrounded entirely by South Africa. With his nonprofit organization, 11 Oaks, Skellenger promotes bucket drip irrigation in barren and dry Lesotho. As Nadine Gilmer reported in her profile of Skellenger in the August 9, […]

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How I became a hickory nut

By Pat Stinson Sun contributor The delicious taste of shagbark hickory nuts — sometimes described as a cross between a black walnut or brazil nut and a pecan — was introduced to me by a friend who moved to Maple City from Springport, Mich., near Jackson. He said he had never tasted another nut that […]

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Sleeping Bear Awakes!

Photo courtesy of Lorraine Tufts, National Park Service From Leelanau.com, April 1, 2004 The village of Glen Arbor was stunned today when Mishe-Mokwa (the “Sleeping Bear”) woke up! The 52.3-foot mother bear had been sleeping for several thousand years and apparently woke up very hungry and cranky. While most of the residents fled in panic […]

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