Join rangers this month for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s first ever InstaMeet!What is an InstaMeet?It’s a fun event where Instagram users (IGers) meet up, take photos, and get to know each other! However, you do not have to be an Instagram user to join in the fun!Anyone is welcome to participate in these ranger-led hikes.Participants are encouraged to bring a camera or a phone to capture images during the hike.
New online magazine NatureChange.org tells Northern Michigan stories about conservation and climate change, including this one about difficult choices facing the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore following the August 2, 2015 super storm.
By Sarah Bearup-Neal Sun contributor In the year leading up to the centennial celebration of the National Park Service’s (NPS) creation, the Glen Arbor Sun has offered stories about the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) and some of the people in the community who have developed a relationship with it. As the NPS’s 100th […]
“Find Your Park” is the message being sent to the world by the National Park Service in anticipation of its 100th Anniversary in 2016. In 2015, a record 1,535,633 people “found their park” at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This just exceeded the 1,531,560 park visitors received in 2012 following ABC’s Good Morning America declaring the park the “Most Beautiful Place in America.”
Retirement is an interpretive experience. For one guy it might mean a pastured life. For another, there’s the Tom Van Zoeren School of Retirement: Not! A former ranger with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL), Van Zoeren’s post-professional life is a blueprint of engaged, purposeful work.
After careful consideration, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore increase entrance and camping fees beginning January 1, 2016 in order to fund important maintenance and visitor service projects within the park and comply with a nationwide review of national park entrance fees.
“The Park has got to figure out how to address the dead fall hazard,” declared Glen Lake Fire Department chief John Dodson after the October Glen Arbor Emergency Services meeting. The “Park” he refers to is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL). All that dead wood, he says, “is fuel building up. Our fire department does not have the staff to maintain a wildfire the size of Alligator Hill.”
Although my friend, Bonnie Gonzales, didn’t quite make it up Alligator Hill when she tried the first time, she felt it was doable. She wanted to try it one last time before she left for the winter. The trick would be to take the fairways rather than the impassable trail. I was game, so we met at the trailhead entrance by the charcoal ovens one sunny Sunday in mid-October.
A Traverse City guy drives into a local National Park. He wants to explore. He wants to leave the world behind for a bit. He’s certainly not there to have a long conversation with another human being; but that’s what he does.
Largely forgotten amidst our Aug. 2 storm coverage, July 2015 set a record for monthly visits to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, with 438,291. That’s 7,000 more than July 2014. June was also a big month for visitors, as the Park welcomed only 800 fewer people than in June 2012, which was the “summer on steroids” following the “Most Beautiful Place in America” coronation.