Yesterday afternoon at 2 p.m., Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Superintendent Dusty Shultz and the National Park’s Midwest Regional Director Mike Reynolds cut the ribbon to officially open the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail, which currently stretches 5 miles between the Dune Climb and Glen Arbor. Organizers and supporters hope that the Trail will one day stretch 27 miles, from the Leelanau-Benzie County Line to Good Harbor Bay.
The Leelanau Peninsula BirdFest is in its second year. It is a ‘standard’ birdwatching festival in that it is a combination of scheduled, guided field trips and evening keynote addresses. Field trips go to various habitat locations to observe as great a variety of birds possible. Field trips are led by top flight birders who in most cases are capable of identifying birds by sight and sound. Birdwatching festivals generally feature a specific bird or birds, or field trips offering a special experience.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will be hosting a kickoff meeting for Adopt-A-Beach volunteers on Thursday, May 24 from 1-3 p.m. at the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center on M-72 in Empire. If you are looking for a way to help keep Lake Michigan beaches beautiful while enjoying a relaxing walk on the beach once a month, you’ll want to learn more about the Adopt-A-Beach Patrol. Many of the volunteers are families or groups of friends who enjoy hiking beaches together.
Imagine, 800 kayaks lying side by side, end to end in rows on the bank of Little Glen Lake in Glen Arbor. A few yards away, picture 800 bikes hanging in organized racks just off of M-22. Beyond the bikes and across M-22, envision 800 athletes ranging from 14 to 71 years old and hailing from 15 states and countries as far as Switzerland running up the Sleeping Bear Dunes Climb. What you are picturing is the fourth annual M-22 Challenge — which will take place this year on June 9 — and if you’re unfamiliar with where it’s taking place, just know that the athletes will tread on what was named the “Most Beautiful Place in America” by Good Morning America last year.
And the next ‘Best Of’ honor bestowed upon our neck of the woods is … drumroll please … “Best Landlocked Beach”. Our proverbial hat is sinking under weight of feathers!
The Spring Sip & Savor returns to the Leelanau Peninsula wine trail the weekend of May 5-6. This annual celebration features food and wine pairings at 19 wineries along with the “Sip-o de Mayo Hat Contest” — a chance to show off your best hat and win prizes including a fantastic getaway to Michigan’s Wine Coast.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced funding for Great Lakes Restoration Initiative projects in Northern Michigan totaling $1.1 million. The projects will help to restore the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Grand Traverse Band watersheds and put people back to work, using a conservation corps model to hire unemployed workers to improve habitat and clean up shoreline.
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.
Here are some reasons you may not want to come to Leelanau County: It’s out of your way. No matter where you are going, Leelanau County is not on the way unless you are in Leelanau County already, in which case you must either go back the way you came or get seriously wet. This has to do with the nature of peninsulas and there is nothing to be done about it.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is celebrating National Public Lands Day (NPLD) and inviting the public to help clean up its beaches on Saturday, Sept. 24 from noon to 3 p.m. Admission to all national parks, including the National Lakeshore, is free that day, and volunteers will receive a voucher to use for entrance to various parks at a later date. So bring your family, your class, your troop, your group, or just yourself, and join others across the country in protecting our public lands.