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Hot topics from the Leelanau Blog: Sleeping Bear Dunes on Good Morning America,
Mario Batali loves Leelanau, Leelanau Wine, Northern Lights | Sugar Loaf | Leelanau Cherries, Sleeping Bear Dunes
What can you say except for "Take THAT doubters of the most beautiful place award!"?
Terry took this shot of North Bar Lake and Lake Michigan from the Pierce Stocking overlook. Check it out bigger and in his slideshow.
Great Lakes Week takes place October 11-14, 2011 and celebrates one of the world's true natural wonders, the five interconnected Great Lakes. Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior provide jobs, recreation and drinking water to more than 30 million people in the Great Lakes basin. Great Lakes Week is a new partnership to improve the places around the basin where people live, work, learn and play. This week's activities, meetings and conferences bring representatives of the U.S. and Canadian governments together with a broad coalition of public and private groups to highlight efforts to implement solutions for the lakes' most pressing problems. The event is headquartered in a single city for the first time ever and that city is Detroit.
Detroit Public Television (DPTV), in partnership with the International Joint Commission, the Great Lakes Commission, U.S. EPA, and Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, will be providing unprecedented access to the largest gathering of scientists, political voices, educators, environmentalists, and interested groups ever assembled to discuss the status and the future of the Great Lakes. Coverage starts today at noon at greatlakesnow.org!
Today's coverage kicks off at noon with an overview of Great Lakes Week, highlights of yesterday's Great Lakes Commission Meeting. Also on tap is the International Joint Commission of US and Canadian government agencies, a report on U.S. and Canadian efforts to restore the chemical, physical and biological diversity of the Great Lakes Basin, updates on critical issues from algae to aquatic invasive species and the Great Lakes Town Hall featuring top officials from both the U.S. and Canada answering on-site and virtual audience questions (Twitter hastag #AskGLW). Much more to follow tomorrow and Friday - check the schedule of events out for an idea.
photo credit: KAScott_20110930_3651fhenacb by Ken Scott/a>
In case you're wondering How Sleeping Bear was voted America’s most beautiful place, the Glen Arbor Sun has your answer. This interesting look at how a relatively tiny market used social media and no small measure of natural assets to score a victory on the national stage is well worth a read. It begins:
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.
Sleeping Bear narrowly beat out Asheville, N.C., for the top spot and also bested vista heavyweights, Newport, R.I., Cape Cod, Mass., Point Reyes, Calif., Aspen, Col., Sedona, Ariz., Destin, Fla., Lanikai Beach, Hawaii, and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. Those vanquished opponents are known worldwide for their beaches, their lobster, their sunsets, their skiing and their peaks. Suffice to say, we’re now on the map too...
Read on at the Glen Arbor Sun and read more about the Good Morning America award on Leelanau.com!
Photo Credit: The Southwest Entrance to the Manitou Passage by jimflix!
Thanks to the Sleeping Bear Dunes Visitor's Bureau for this news!
This Saturday (Sep 24) is National Public Lands Day. NPLD is the nation's largest, single-day volunteer event for public lands in the United States, and last year. The impact is huge, especially in this era of declining budgets and last year's 170,000 volunteers worked at over 2,080 sites in every state:
The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is inviting you to be a part of this by helping to clean up beaches in the Lakeshore on Saturday from 12-3 PM. Admission to all national parks, including the National Lakeshore, is free Saturday, and volunteers will receive a voucher to use for entrance to various parks at a later date.
The third annual Michigan Schooner Festival sets sail September 9-11, 2011 on West Bay in Traverse City at Open Space Park and Clinch Park Marina. The festival will feature eight tall ships including the Appledore V, Madeline, Welcome, Manitou, Pier Wisconsin's S/V Denis Sullivan and Leelanau's own schooner Inland Seas aka the Great Lakes Schoolship.
It kicks off Friday night (September 9) with the Grand Parade of Sail as the eight vessels sail down West Grand Traverse Bay together and dock at Clinch Marina. Other weekend highlights include ship tours, wine & beer tastings, food, entertainment, the Ring of Steel pirate reenactment troupe, artist vendors, kids games, and ticketed sailings aboard the schooners.
Read more from the Grand Traverse Insider and check out some footage from last year in the video below!
Photo credit: The Welcome by ETCphoto
"It looks like nothing else in America."
~Josh Elliot of Good Morning America
Tens of thousands of viewers voted online for this Michigan park, which is one of the nation's best-kept secrets. The hidden gem boasts 64 miles of beaches along Lake Michigan, two islands, 26 inland lakes, more than 50,000 acres of land, and the monumental sand dunes from which it gets its name.
..."GMA" viewer Jim Madole of Grand Rapids, Mich., nominated Sleeping Bear for its natural beauty.
"It is peaceful and serene, a place for gazing out into the world, night or day, and realizing that the universe is truly a magical, majestic mystery, and humans are just a very small part of it all," he wrote in his submission. "Here at Sleeping Bear, I sit in awe and wonder at the perfection of Mother Nature."
Click through to see what Mario Batali has to say about the Sleeping Bear Dunes and explore it in depth at the official Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore website and in our clairvoyantly titled section, America's Lakeshore: The Sleeping Bear Dunes! Get some amazing photos in the Sleeping Bear Dunes slideshow from the Leelanau.com group on Flickr!
Photo Credit: Visions in the Manitou Passage by Happyhiker4
National Geographic has a new book out entitled The 10 Best of Everything National Parks, and the Detroit Free Press reports that:
Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has one of the top views of any national park.
Listed first for "Hike-to Views" was the park's Sleeping Bear Point Trail with its "beautiful overlooks of Lake Michigan and the surrounding landscape."
Check out the Sleeping Bear Point trail and see other trails in Leelanau.com's Sleeping Bear Dunes guide!
Photo credit: Sleeping Bear Point by Happyhiker4
Here's a slideshow from Joey Randall that takes you to some of the great views around the park!
Sometimes you just want to fly high above what March calls "weather" ... here's another video from Michael Drinian of a quick flight over Leland from Sugar Loaf.
The Leelanau Enterprise has a feature about a strain of lake herring that just came across my news feed about a Great Lakes fish long thought to be extinct that is making a comeback in Grand Traverse Bay:
A strain of lake herring more commonly seen in the last century in Lake Superior is now thriving in local waters, according to fisheries research biologist Randy Claramunt of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources research station in Charlevoix.
Fishermen who were targeting salmon in Grand Traverse Bay would occasionally find these fish that looked a lot like whitefish – but not quite,” according to Claramunt. “Then, these fish started showing up occasionally in commercial nets.”
It wasn’t until the early 2000’s, Claramunt said, that biologists confirmed the presence of the lost lake herring – and found a spawning population of them on the shoals of East Grand Traverse Bay.
“To the average person it might look identical to whitefish – so I’m sure people are eating them; and we’ve seen some for sale as whitefish through the commercial fishery,” Claramunt said.
Read on at the link above and sorry for missing this at first because Claramunt was doing a public talk that would have been interesting to attend!
Photo courtesy Michigan DNR.
Next Friday (March 11, 2011) at 7 PM at Brilliant Books in Suttons Bay, Loreen Niewenhuis will release her book, A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach. The book chronicles her walk around the shoreline of Lake Michigan and her observations along the way. Absolute Michigan caught up with Loreen and asked her a couple of questions.
ABSOLUTE MICHIGAN: What prompted you to do this?
LOREEN NIEWENHUIS: I've always felt connected to Lake Michigan. It has always been the place where I relax, walk, and recenter myself. When I turned 45, I wanted to take on something large, something that would challenge me on many levels. So, I pulled out my maps of Lake Michigan and plotted a 1000-mile route around it.
ABSOLUTE MICHIGAN: What was your favorite stretch of Michigan beach?
LOREEN NIEWENHUIS: I fell in love with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Leelanau Peninsula all over again. The natural beauty is amazing, the towns are very connected to the lake along this stretch, and there are several excellent independent bookstores along the way.
Visit Loreen's blog for photos from her trip through the Sleeping Bear, read an excerpt from the book over at Absolute Michigan and meet her next Friday at Brilliant Books!
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