Thinking of taking your kayak or canoe from Sleeping Bear Point to South Manitou Island? Think again. The air temperature may reach a balmy 80 degrees, and the surface water temperature near the beach is slowly approaching swimmable levels. But the open water temperature out in the Manitou Passage never reaches the 60s. That’s frigid. And it can kill you.
Who would have thought that Istanbul would remind me so much of where I grew up above Sleeping Bear Bay? Everywhere you turn there’s a vista of turquoise water; and a pinkish tinge to the light, that I’ve never seen anywhere except on the Leelanau. If I don’t stop and think for a minute, the Bosporus and the Golden Horn, could almost be the Manitou Passage and Pyramid Point.
“What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen with this telescope?” asks a visitor to the Leelanau School’s Lanphier Observatory. My stock answer is another question: “You mean in the sky, or on the beach?”
Ever since Wednesday, August 17, Northern Michiganders have both embraced and grappled with the news that the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and surrounding region are considered the “most beautiful place in America” — at least according to 22 percent of 100,000 voters who participated in the ABC show Good Morning America’s online competition the second week of August.
When I first started researching the early land transactions of the unincorporated village of Glen Arbor, I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but I certainly didn’t expect to discover that a woman would play a dominate role in the land market and that other women did most of the buying. Harriet Fisher, the wife of John Fisher, one of the early settlers of Glen Arbor, owned most of the land that was to become the village of Glen Arbor that we know today.
The long walk down the Dune Climb trail to Lake Michigan has blessed hikers with an added gift this fall. Not just the azure waters at the conclusion of the 2.5-mile hike in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — but a shipwreck.