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Crystal River Outfitters Recreational District hosts fifth annual Strolling Lights Festival

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The Strolling Lights Festival within The Crystal River Outfitters Recreational District has become an annual tradition for both families, groups or individuals to join together to decorate a holiday tree in honor of a worthy cause, or to get visitors in the holiday spirit when they light up The District in Glen Arbor. Proceeds from the 2025 Strolling Lights Festival will support the Empire Area Food Pantry which serves all of Leelanau County. This once-a-week Food Pantry, which is hosted at Glen Lake Community Reformed Church on Tuesdays year-round, serves an enormous need in our community to help support those who are struggling to put food on their tables.

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Honoring the workers who powered us through the summer

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Many local Leelanau County businesses rely, in part, on J-1 international student workers to shoulder the load through the busy summer tourism season. Each Labor Day weekend, we honor and thank those workers. Meet a few of them here—from Anderson’s Market, Art’s Tavern, Grocers Daughter Chocolate, Blu, Crystal River Outfitters and La Becasse.

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Hunt for Easter eggs in Glen Arbor

The Crystal River Outfitters Recreational District will host the fourth district-wide Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday, April 19, at the M22 Glen Arbor store. The afternoon will be full of Easter activities with spring drink specials and Peep S’mores by the fires. The event will kick off at 12:30 pm with the Easter Bunny arriving via kayak on the river.

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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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