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Sleeping Bear manhunt, Empire sugar bear, Pop-tart man Bill Post, Twin Flames wedding: Glen Arbor Sun’s top-viewed stories of 2024

Our coverage in 2024 featured crimes, celebrities, cool new businesses, and an homage to the now removed Crystal River culverts. Our top 10 most-read stories included: a manhunt in the National Lakeshore; the search for a black bear that broke into Grocers Daughter Chocolate and devoured a 50-pound bag of sugar; Jerry Seinfeld’s movie “Unfrosted” about Pop-Tart man Bill Post, and the Twin Flames Universe cult’s secretive wedding in Traverse City. Thanks for your readership. We look forward to sharing more stories of Leelanau County events, characters, businesses, and the arts in 2025. Here’s the list of our Top 10 stories by online views in 2024.

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Video: Timber Bridge replaces Crystal River culverts

The Crystal River culverts under County Road 675 are gone and have been replaced by an 80-foot timber bridge (Click on the story to watch our video). Grand Traverse Engineering & Construction and the Leelanau County Road Commission completed the work earlier this month, and CR-675 is now open to traffic. Work to replace other bridges over the Crystal River will commence in summer 2025.

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Crystal River Outfitters hosts Strolling Lights Festival

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The Crystal River Outfitters Recreational District is excited to kick off the holiday season in Glen Arbor with another fun, family-friendly Strolling Lights Festival. This event is a great way for families, friends, teams, businesses and organizations to express their festivity, all while supporting a great cause. Whether highlighting your favorite thing to do in Michigan, representing a family tradition, or supporting a cause, each Strolling Lights tree is a blank slate ready to be decorated.

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Goodbye culverts, hello timber bridge over the Crystal River

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“Shooting the tube” through the Crystal River culverts under County Road 675 is now an experience of the past. This month the Grand Traverse Engineering & Construction will remove the three culverts and replace the road above them with an 80-foot timber bridge. The work should be complete by the end of November, according to GTEC construction manager Ken Ockert. S. Dunns Farm Road will be closed to thru traffic and rerouted around Big Glen Lake for the duration of the project. Labor Day Monday, Sept. 2, was the last day for kayakers, canoers and paddleboarders to float through the culverts. Their removal is bittersweet for the staff at Crystal River Outfitters, which has sent thousands of people down the river in the past three decades. “It’s fun to look back at the last 30 years and think that the term ‘shoot the tube’ has become synonymous with Crystal River Outfitters kayak trips down the Crystal River,” said Katy Wiesen, who co-owns the business together with her husband Matt. “Shooting the tube became not only an annual family tradition but also led to many variations on stickers, hats, t-shirts and more that are soon to be a piece of history.”

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Crystal River Outfitters’ Strolling Lights Festival benefits Kelly Florip

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The Crystal River Outfitters Recreational District is kicking off the holiday season in Glen Arbor with the third annual Strolling Lights Festival. The event is a great way for families, friends, teams, businesses and organizations to express their festivity, all while supporting a great cause. This year, the cause is near and dear to the hearts of CRO customers and team. In August, lead buyer Kelly Florip was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in her life and has a major journey ahead of her with treatment and travel for this treatment. The cost is $150 per sponsored tree with proceeds going towards Glen Lake School on behalf of the Kelly Florip family. Twenty pre-lit trees will be placed around the CRO District by Nov. 17. Sponsoring groups and families must provide the decorations and have until Nov. 25 to decorate it. After that, trees will be on display for the public to admire through the new year.

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Sheldon plans 18-hole putting course for Glen Arbor next spring

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Mike Sheldon, the longtime CEO of Deutsch advertising agency in Los Angeles and a Lake Leelanau resident since 2017, has broken ground on an 18-hole putting and dining destination at the former River at Crystal Bend in Glen Arbor—where the Crystal River turns and heads northeast toward The Homestead and Sleeping Bear Bay. He received a conditional Land Use Permit last night from the Glen Arbor Township Planning Commission and hopes to open the venue to the public next spring. The destination will bring even more action to the east side of town, where Crystal River Outfitters, the Cyclery, the M22 Store and Coastal already draw crowds. Less than a mile away, the renovated Mill has generated buzz since it opened this spring.

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Multi-million-dollar bridges will replace Crystal River culverts: County Road 675 closes this Fall

Just outside of Glen Arbor, a well-traveled section of County Road 675 is imperiled as it crosses three sets of undersized culverts slowly crumbling into the Crystal River. That’s a multi-million-dollar problem for the Leelanau County Road Commission. The engineering plans call for the construction of a concrete and steel structure to replace the culverts under CR 675 closest to M-22. That will keep the two road surfaces closely matched in elevation. The two sets of culverts further east, including the “shoot-the-tube” culverts, are to be replaced with classic wood bridges providing a lot of headroom for paddlers, ending the need for portages across the road. Plans call for the replacement of the Tucker Lake overflow culvert with a wide and substantial concrete box culvert.

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Millie’s Pizza and Ice Cream opens on the Crystal River

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This summer means now. A sign reading “Opening this Summer” inside the window at Millie’s, the new pizza and ice cream restaurant on the footprint of the famed Riverfront Pizza, has been replaced by a new sign that reads “Grand Opening” and “Thursday to Sunday 12 pm to 8 pm.” Millie’s holds its grand opening on Thursday, Aug. 10, and features made-from-scratch “Roman Pizza al Taglio,” known for its semi-thick, light and fluffy interior and crispy exterior. Pizza slices, which cost $5 or $6 each, offer cheese, pepperoni, sausage and onion, or mushroom and roasted garlic. For dessert, Millie’s features ice cream in two flavors—cinnamon toast and dark cherry—crafted from a rich, custard base that uses cream, whole milk, sugar, salt and egg yolks. The restaurant is managed by Fernhaus Studio hospitality group, whose team also runs The Mill, another time-honored Glen Arbor landmark on the Crystal River, The Riverside in Leland, and Brew in Traverse City.

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Left-handed gigging throughout Leelanau

Leelanau County has a vivacious music scene all summer, that continues into the spring and fall months. Whether they are buskers in Glen Arbor, performers at restaurants in Northport, or concerts at The Old Art Building in Leland, the county is filled with talented musicians who love to share their art with the public. Blake Elliott is a local musician who plays a variety of music spanning from jazz and blues to old fashioned country and folk in Leelanau County. She makes her living by playing gigs all around northern Michigan, and entertains audiences nearly every single day in the summer. In the winter, Elliott is an instructor in the songwriting department at Interlochen Arts Academy, and continues to play music professionally full time. 

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Crystal River Outfitters host Strolling Lights Festival through New Year’s Day, eye new building in Riverfront Pizza space in 2023

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The Crystal River Outfitters Recreation District on Glen Arbor’s east end, which includes the M22 and Coastal retail stores, is attracting customers to its Strolling Lights Festival, which continues through New Year’s Day. According to Katy Wiesen, who owns the three businesses together with her husband Matt, the year ahead will yield a new building across M-22 in the vacant lot which previously housed Riverfront Pizza & Deli.

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