Leelanau.com Blog
leelanau county news • traverse city news • michigan news

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 Grand Rapids Press reports that:

Dwaun Anderson pulled one of the biggest upsets of the high school basketball season when the Suttons Bay guard was named today as the 31st winner of the Hal Schram Mr. Basketball award.

Anderson became the first player from a school north of Saginaw to win the award. The 6-foot-3, 195-pound guard, who led his team to last year's Class C state championship game, has signed to play at Michigan State.

“To be honest, I wasn’t even expecting to get it,’’ Anderson told the Detroit Free Press, which administers the award in conjunction with BCAM. “I just figured that no one from downstate really knows me, so I figured someone from down there would get it.”

You can also read more in the Freep. Anderson averaged 20 points, 10 rebounds and 4.8 assists his senior season and is the third consecutive Mr. Basketball to sign with Michigan State, joining 2010 recipient Keith Appling and 2009 winner Derrick Nix.

Here's a video of a pretty impressive dunk by Anderson and you can also watch some highlights from last year.

The Birmingham Patch reports that in this weekend's Uptown Film Festival held Saturday night in partnership with the Detroit Independent Film Festival the short film Sleeping Bear picked up three Michigan Film awards including Best Experimental Film, Best Editing for director Jack Cronin and Best Michigan Short Film.

Filmmaker Jack Cronin's website says that Sleeping Bear was filmed at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore over the course of three years. It loosely follows the cycle of seasons, and is a study of the landscape and an attempt to represent the unique character of the region. You can view the entire film below - enjoy!

Sleeping Bear from Jack Cronin

Julie and Walter Weeks won an Igloo at the Summer Auction fundraiser for the Leelanau Conservancy and Ken Scott put together a cool timelapse!

Click the photo to see Ken's star trail shot of the igloo bigger!

The other day we stumbled upon this cool video of the wreck of the tug Lauren Castle from the Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College.

NMC Explains their underwater mapping program of Grand Traverse Bay and says:

Last year’s mapping concentrated on shallower areas of the bays andpinpointed for the first time the wreck of a ship, the Lauren Castle, near Suttons Bay, shown in these scanned images. When research concludes next month, a majority of the arms of Grand Traverse Bay will be mapped. The data will result in the first new maps in 80 years.

“The sophistication of this equipment is phenomenal .  This is the first time the bays have ever been imaged to this resolution,” said Hans VanSumeren, director of the Water Studies Institute.

The tug Lauren Castle was built in 1906 by the Delaware River Iron Ship Building & Engineering Company at Chester, PA with the original name General G.M. Sorrel. It had seven different owners during its 75 year career on the East Coast and in the Great Lakes. A a work tug, it engaged in a variety of tasks, especially the towing of commercial ships.

In 1974, Lauren Castle lost two crew men while assisting the cement carrier S.T. Crapo. On November 5, 1980 the Lauren Castle foundered with one loss of life on in Grand Traverse Bay while assisting the tanker Amoco Wisconsin. The shipwreck was discovered in 1999 by Thaddius Bedford, a local resident and current member of the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council. It is located about seven miles north of Traverse City within the West Bay, in approximately 390 feet of water.

See more images from the exploration of the bay at NMC!

While many people look at the snow & cold as a downside of the Leelanau Peninsula, this Leelanau Conservancy Why Leelanau? video celebrates the season with photos and comments from people about why they love Leelanau in the winter. Thanks to the Glen Arbor Sun for tipping us off!

Please extinguish all cigarettes and fasten your seat belts!

We're going to try and feature some of the regional & national media coverage Leelanau is getting on this blog - if you have links, share them with us here or on the Leelanau.com Facebook!

The wine industry is definitely a hot topic! A few weeks ago, USA Today tapped Leelanau & Old Mission as one of their 10 great places for local wines. In Hour Detroit, Lorri Hathaway and Sharon Kegerreis urge you to escape to the Leelanau Peninsula for Wine & Holiday Shopping:

Find that warm, tingly sensation of good tidings early with an escape to Leelanau Peninsula for Toast the Season — a spectacular northern Michigan wine celebration that kicks off the holidays. Upon arrival at the first winery, you’ll feel the festive spirit when greeted with a gift bag and a special wine pour deliciously paired with gourmet fare. Then, enjoy a leisurely trek along the renowned M-22 lakeshore drive with stops at any of the 18 wineries for more handpicked wine and food pairings. (Be sure to use a designated driver - it’s surprising how quickly the wine tastes add up!)

In a shameless bit of self-promotion, here's me (Andy McFarlane of Leelanau.com) on FOX-32 talking about the wonders of M-22 in part 1 of Alex Jocich's feature "You Haven't Traveled Across Northern Michigan Until.... I had fun being part of the feature, and I really do believe that M-22 is a road as mythic and cool in its own way as Route 66.

In case you missed it, Livability.com rated Traverse City as #1 on their list of surprising Foodie Cities this spring. They wrote:

Known as the Cherry Capital of the World, the Lake Michigan resort town of Traverse City does a pretty good job with other foods, too. With plenty of award-winning restaurants, wineries, farmers markets and dairies, Traverse City has been called “a new foodie haven” by The Huffington Post, and Midwest Living magazine recently named it second on its list of the region's “best food towns.” At the heart of the accolades is an emphasis on the farm-to-table philosophy. At Trattoria Stella, where chef Myles Anton was nominated for a 2010 James Beard Foundation award, the menu of Italian fare takes care to note ingredients from local farms and dairies. For wine lovers, the city's Leelanau Peninsula and Old Mission Peninsula wine regions lie along the 45th parallel— the same latitude that gives the Bordeaux region of France its famous reputation.

Two thoughts on that:

1. Not one but TWO Leelanau chefs were nominated as well: Randy Chamberlain at Blu in Glen Arbor and Guillaume Hazaël-Massieux of La Bécasse near Maple City!
2. While the national media often says "Traverse City," the imagery and features they identify are 100% Leelanau.

Photo Credit: colour around the bend (1) by Pettman's Photographic Memories

The fact that the Westmoreland was one of the earliest propellers on the Lakes and that she was almost brand new (one year old) when she sank makes for a great shipwreck story. But when stories of her fabled cargo started circulating around the wharfs and bars of Milwaukee and Frankfort she became a legend.

Stories of gold in the strong box and brandy and whiskey in her hold seem to emanate for the Westmoreland’s first mate, Paul Pelkey. Captain Pelkey was far from a crackpot and considered a very capable seaman and navigator. Captain Pelkey returned in 1872 and 1874 to get at the cargo of the Westmoreland. That’s a lot of time and effort to put into something, unless you knew something was there…

~via MichiganMysteries.com

The other day, the Sleeping Bear Dunes blog tipped us off to a story from earlier in the summer that we missed. I talked with Ross for a bit this morning. He told me that it was his intention to leave artifacts at the wreck, because it's the law and also to give people the experience of diving an "underwater museum." He also let me use these photos he took - see more on his Facebook!

The Traverse City Record-Eagle article Diver says he found Westmoreland shipwreck explained that diver Ross Richardson of Lake Ann combed the waters near the Sleeping Bear Dunes for years seeking the Westmoreland — a vessel that foundered near South Manitou Island in a Lake Michigan winter storm on Dec. 7, 1854.

Richardson, however, kept his discovery a secret until he could set aside time to dive down and see the ship up close. His brother joined him three days later, and they filmed underwater video of the Westmoreland, which rose 30 feet above the sand in some spots. Richardson then posted the video on his website, www.michiganmysteries.com.

"I was shocked," Richardson said of his discovery. "It's an area of underwater archaeology that's kept it pretty hidden. It's a good piece of history."

Several expeditions failed in the search of the 200-foot Westmoreland, though some newspaper reports from the late 19th century indicate the vessel was located. Historians believe it was sunk by a wicked winter storm. Stories passed down over generations about treasure aboard the ship, but Richardson refutes those claims.

"There's no proof or records of it down there," he said.

Anyway, here's the video (no sound) and you can read more about the Westmoreland and other Michigan mysteries on his web site.

I can't think of too many better ways to spend two and a half minutes than watching this aurora borealis video (and many more from Ken Scott). I didn't see any northern lights this summer. I feel like I did now though. Ken writes:
The conditions were right, the forecasts were for strong sightings, I was there ... but this is all I was able to record. Two nights of aurora searching, just north of the 45th parallel ... it's good I have an appreciation for the process.