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CNN Travel names Northwest Michigan among 24 places to visit in 2024

This week CNN Travel named our region, including Leelanau County and Traverse City, among the 24 best places to visit in the new year. The story encourages readers and travelers to “look at places that are still largely undiscovered, or alluring in the offseason, or frequently overlooked for their larger first cities or neighbors. Maybe it’s time to head to places that are making it easier for tourists to visit and those that pay close attention to encouraging tourism that’s sustainable.” Sleeping Bear Dunes is no stranger to national and international media exposure. In 2011 the ABC show “Good Morning America” named our region “the most beautiful place in America,” which immediately boosted tourism numbers to the National Lakeshore. The honor was largely the result of northern Michigan’s social media campaign, which we examined in this article.

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Sleeping Bear Gateways Council aims to help National Lakeshore manage growing pains

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and surrounding communities are suffering growing pains as we’ve become a prime destination for tourists from all over the world. Conscious of these growing pains, a new group called the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council is stepping forward to facilitate dialogue between the National Lakeshore, local business leaders and civic leaders.

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Glen Arbor Wines: where the two peninsulas meet

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Lissa Edwards can remember Glen Arbor before it had sidewalks, or much asphalt. “Everything smelled like hot sand and sumac,” she laughs, over a glass of Chardonnay. “Every once in a while a certain smell takes me back to those days. I spent every summer in Glen Arbor in the 1960s. This town is deep in my DNA.”

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Sleeping Bear on cusp of another Good Morning American bonanza

From staff reports Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore once again find itself in the spotlight of ABC’s “Good Morning America”. In 2011, the show’s viewers picked our National Lakeshore as America’s “most beautiful place”. That gave tourism to Sleeping Bear and the Glen Arbor region a shot in the arm. This time, ABC’s Ginger Zee […]

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Sleeping Bear tourism creates over $150 million in local economic benefit

A new National Park Service report shows that 1,531,560 visitors to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2012 spent nearly $152 million in communities near the Park. That spending supported 2,818 jobs in the local area.

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Fill ‘er up, work your core, launch the boat, taste delicious chocolate

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What services are imperative for a small town like Glen Arbor? How about a grocery store, a hardware store, a gas station and an active Chamber of Commerce. Check three of four for Jeff and Georgia Gietzen, the Grand Rapids transplants who acquired Northwoods Hardware three years ago (and became sole owners in 2011), who have also become Chamber leaders, and this spring bought the gas station just north of town. Northwoods Filling Station now boasts vintage 1950s signage, sells gasoline and quick bites, and most importantly stays open 7 days a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. That’s a big improvement over having to drive to Empire or Maple City for petrol.

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Real estate sales surge in Glen Arbor

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It wasn’t quite a “road to Damascus” epiphany, but Rob Serbin did find the road to Little Traverse Inn last year. The Glen Arbor realtor finally sold the restaurant on M-22 for the second time in seven years, this time to Scotsman Graeme Leask, after it sat idle on the market for 18 months. The sale was emblematic of Serbin’s monster year, which saw his company’s net sales surge by 250 percent. Numerous realtors in the Glen Arbor area shared that good fortune.

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Sleeping Bear Dunes record-breaking visitor tally up 13.6 percent in 2012

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The numbers have been counted, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore reports that the pristine National Park in northwest-lower Michigan attracted 1,531,560 visitors in 2012 — a record-breaking tally by a wide margin. On the strength of the “Good Morning America” television show’s “Most Beautiful Place in America” honor in August 2011, and the added attention it cast on Glen Arbor and the surrounding region, 13.59 percent more tourists ran up our dunes, hiked our trails and frequented our restaurants and galleries last year compared with 2011.

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Busiest … summer … ever

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Sometime this month, the 1,364,835th visitor to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in 2012 will arrive at the Dune Climb, hike to Pyramid Point, or perhaps bike the Heritage Trail and enjoy its stunning autumnal beauty. In doing so, that visitor will officially make this the busiest year ever for the Glen Arbor region, the most profitable for local businesses, and perhaps the most hectic one too.

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Port Oneida Historic Landscape Plan raises question of preservation vs. recreation

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This summer, the National Park Service (NPS) unveiled its options for the Historic Landscape Management Plan of the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. Some four miles east of Glen Arbor, the shoreline settlement was founded as a logging community, with subsistence (family) farming and fishing, in the early 1860s by immigrant pioneers from Prussia and Hanover (now parts of modern Germany), and lived in continuously until the 1970s. It is defined as a “historic vernacular landscape … that has evolved through use by ordinary people” over a “period of significance of 1870-1945,” in the Plan’s Executive Summary, and it is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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