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Inspired by Gateways Council, Housing North launches housing exchange

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Finding housing in the area has long been a challenge, and it only seems to be getting worse. In response, Housing North is implementing the Housing Exchange Platform, a means for those seeking rentals and those who may have available housing to connect. “It just launched,” says Housing North executive director Yarrow Brown of the effort. The Housing Exchange is a free, community-based tool to be used by both employers seeking housing for their workers and for individuals, connecting them with rental properties, whether that is homes, apartments, ADUs or simply rooms in a home. The platform grew out of a similar effort by the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council. The Leelanau County non-profit recognized the need for rental housing was acute and getting worse. Between low inventories of home for sale and for rent, increasing prices and the trend for homes to be used for more profitable short-term rentals, the Sleeping Bear Gateways Council formed in 2018 to focus on challenges and opportunities in the communities around the National Lakeshore.

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Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear holds Port Oneida Run

The 13th annual Port Oneida Run—an event of the National Park’s nonprofit partner Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear—will take place on Saturday, August 2. The run starts and ends at the big red barn and lawn area at the Olsen Farm/Port Oneida Farms Heritage Center, 3164 W. Harbor Hwy, (M-22) Maple City, MI, just four miles north of Glen Arbor.

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Summer brings activities to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Day or night, sunny or cloudy, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore provides opportunities for family fun. Whether it’s self-directed hikes or drives, ranger-led programs or events coordinated by partners such as Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes or Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, the area offers plenty of ways to explore, engage and maybe even get a little exercise. You may want to start early if you’re planning on some of the more popular attractions. On its website, the National Park Service recommends hitting the following before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. to allow for easier parking, lower temperatures and fewer fellow outdoor enthusiasts.

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Scratching the right itch

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Ron Reimink knew how uncomfortable and annoying swimmer’s itch could be. He spent much of his adult life trying to eradicate it in lakes across northern Michigan. Then one day, he realized he was completely wrong, writes Dan Wanschura in this story adapted from an Interlochen Public Radio podcast. Glen Lake is one of the most beautiful lakes in the world—clear turquoise-colored water, with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore off in the distance. It was an ideal setting for Reimink’s summer job. One particularly beautiful day, Reimink, who’s a biologist, was walking around the lake, through the water, up and over docks, doing research on ducks. Then, a couple hours after he’d wrapped up for the day, he started to get this sensation in his legs. He looked down, and there were all these red spots popping up. Each one was around the size of a nickel. They started to itch like crazy. “And I literally scratched many of them until they bled,” Reimink said. “It was so intense.”

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M22 Challenge returns June 14

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The M22 Challenge, which takes place June 14, has been voted as one of the best endurance events in northern Michigan. The run, bike, paddle event takes place in the heart of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, making for a beautiful backdrop while racing. The 900-participant race is sold out.

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“Brutal work” shoveling sand. Goodbye, Pierce Stocking overlook

Millions of visitors to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore remember the iconic wooden viewing platform a short walk from the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive stop #9, which was removed by Park staff last month after shifting sands eroded the platform’s support. Thousands have taken photos since the full platform was installed in 1986. Some ran down the steep cliff toward Lake Michigan. A few couldn’t get back up and paid hefty fines to be rescued by rangers and first responders. Tom Mountz, a former maintenance worker who retired from Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2018 after 43 years on the job, remembers shoveling sand when the platform was installed nearly 40 years ago. Lots of sand. “Several times a week, first thing in the morning, a crew of four-six of us needed to shovel the boardwalk to #9. From a few inches of sand to a foot or more. Brutal work. But we were all 25-30 years old. Eventually a new, improved boardwalk was built and properly sized so a tractor could remove 90 percent of the sand.”

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Confessions of a recovering rockhound

It’s really no surprise that the Great Lakes Rocks & Minerals Facebook page has almost than 340,000 members, writes Tim Mulherin. First-time visitors to Lake Michigan, especially here along Leelanau County’s magnificent stretch of the big lake’s beach, are drawn to the stones, fossils and beach glass offered up with each wave that lands ashore. Even those who are not geologically inclined can’t ignore the eons-old rocky scatterings of water-glossed beauty at their feet. The photographs that especially get my attention are those displaying dozens of beach stones arranged for a self-congratulatory photo shoot. Typically, I’m moved to pose a single suggestive question: Catch and release? It often garners several laughing emojis. And yet… I’m serious. For years, my wife has discouraged me from collecting geological keepsakes for my ever-expanding collection: Petoskey stones, Charlevoix stones, agates, chain coral, and crinoids being my favorites. She habitually instructs me to return them before we decamp from the beach and head home.

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Origin Stories: remembering our resorting history

Everyone has an “origin story” for how their family arrived, found, or landed in this area, writes Rebecca G Carlson in this first installment in our series on the history of Leelanau County resorts and getaways. Which category does your family fall into: Campers? Resorters? Hotel guests? Fishing trips? Connections to the area? In the following editions of the Sun, Carlson will highlight local resorts such as Fountain Point, The Jolli Lodge, The Leelanau Country Inn (now the Little Traverse Inn), Perrins Landing, Sunset Lodge, and other vacation destinations that attracted many voyagers to the area.

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Descendents of Black pioneers return to Leelanau for film screening

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“The Search for Anna and Levi: A Lost History of Black Homesteaders in Leelanau County” will show at Leland School on May 31—not at the hamstrung Sleeping Bear Dunes headquarters, as originally scheduled. The Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay initially screened the film in February. Northern Michigan has begun to feel like a second home for Philadelphia resident Carmen Hopson. Ever since she received a life-changing Facebook message in September 2022 from Kevin Brooks, an amateur genealogist based in Grand Rapids, who shared photos to show that their ancestors—hers Black, his White—were neighboring farm owners and pioneering homesteaders more than 100 years ago along Little Glen Lake. “It feels like we’re coming home. This is a place where we will be welcomed home,” said Hopson. The National Lakeshore decided that it could no longer host the screening following the Trump administration’s March 27 executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that cast this nation’s collective reexamination of historical racism as a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”

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Earth Week includes rally in support of National Parks, Leelanau Conservancy events, Seth Bernard concert

This week is Earth Week, with Earth Day honored on Tuesday, April 22. It’s also National Park Week. Events in Leelanau County include a rally on Tuesday at 3 pm in Empire to support Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore—which has faced deep spending cuts and a hiring freeze by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Leelanau Conservancy offers opportunities each day this week, starting tomorrow, to join hikes, volunteer, attend a trivia night, and learn about local efforts to preserve trees.

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