A training session for new Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail Ambassadors will be held Saturday, May 12 at 1 p.m. at the DH Day Log Cabin in DH Day Campground — right along the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail.
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While our national parks are as popular as ever, many are in need of repairs. Because of aging facilities and unreliable funding, roughly $46 million worth of repairs have accumulated in our state alone. Here in Michigan, investments in our parks would support 452 jobs in planning, road building, construction and carpentry, among other positions.
Online registration for the M22 Challenge opens Thursday, March 1, at 8 a.m. The annual event is capped at 900 athletes and in the past several years has reached capacity within 15 minutes. This year’s M22 Challenge will be held Saturday, June 9.
Special Sunday ranger-led snowshoe hikes are being added to the program calendar at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore this winter. In addition to their regularly scheduled Saturday hikes, snowshoe hikes will be offered on Sundays at 1 p.m., Feb. 4 and 11. Meet at the National Lakeshore’s Philip A. Hart Visitor Center in Empire. Reservations are required. Please call 231-326-4700, extension 5010, for details and to make reservations.
Superintendent Scott Tucker is pleased to announce that Veterans Day Weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 11-12, will be celebrated as fee-free days for all Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore visitors in honor of U.S. veterans and current members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Come and experience your park during this special fee-free weekend or any day! The National Lakeshore is open year-round.
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.”
At one time, it was lovely and serene. “We begin in a peaceful place in the woods among the tall timber and wildflowers of Leelanau County,” wrote author Leonard G. Overmyer in his 1999 book Forest Haven Soldiers: The Civil War Veterans of Glen Lake & Surrounding Leelanau. “A site, by Forest Haven Road and M-22, where lies the old Glen Arbor Township Cemetery. It was used primarily in the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s for the early pioneers of the area. This quiet location holds the final resting-place of several Civil War soldiers.”
The sky is the limit at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Join park rangers and astronomers from the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society (GTAS) on Monday, Aug. 21 from 1-3:30 p.m. at the Dechow farm in the National Lakeshore’s Port Oneida Rural Historic District to experience the Great American Total Eclipse. At the National Lakeshore, the eclipse will start at 12:57 p.m. and end at 3:39 p.m. Maximum solar coverage of 75.26% will occur at 2:19 p.m. All sky programs offered by the National Lakeshore are free. Participants need only purchase the Park Entrance Pass or have an Annual Pass displayed in their vehicle to join in the fun.
You know a race is going to be special when it is a unique distance. Mostly we see 5Ks and 10Ks, but you don’t see too many 4-Mile races around. Fortunately for us, the Dune Dash 4-Mile Run/Walk is not only unique in distance, but in many other aspects as well.
Painter Catherine VanVoorhis brings the accumulated knowledge of her three-decades long relationship with the Sleeping Bear Dunes to canvas. An exhibition of VanVoorhis’s take on Leelanau County’s iconic natural features will be exhibited at Center Gallery, 6023 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor. This show runs Aug. 11-17. An artist’s reception opens the exhibition on Friday, Aug. 11, 6-8 p.m.