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Here's a new background for you to help you keep up with the crazy March weather! Just click to download from Flickr.

More backgrounds from Leelanau.com! (also see our Backgrounds page)

 

The majority of our snow comes from lake effect. We don’t usually see that heavy cement-mixer type of snow."
~ Gaylord-based National Weather Service meteorologist John Boris

As Leelanau continues to dig out from a MAJOR winter storm, we thought we would post some of the highlights (or is that low points) of this very disruptive storm. TV 9&10 meteorologist Tom O'Hare explains: (more...)

"I like to take trips like this, to get out of the rut of ordinary life and test myself. I don't have a lot of kayaking experience, but I like getting out and seeing how far I can go."
~Steve Snyder

Hello boys and girls, today we have the story of The Very Lucky Kayaker.

Once upon a time there was a man named Steve Snyder, who paddled from Glen Haven nine miles to South Manitou Island in a brand new kayak to camp. He ran into trouble two miles into his return trip when the spray skirt came off. With no wetsuit and taking on water, he was, as Jim Stamm pointed out when he emailed it over, incredibly lucky to survive.

He was lifted off the island by a Coast Guard Helicopter, hopefully wiser. mLive closes their article:

Michigan paddlers are fortunate. There are two excellent multiday sea kayaking symposiums every year. A symposium is slated May 25-28 in Muskegon County by the West Michigan Coastal Kayakers Association. See wmcka.org for details. The other is the Great Lakes Sea Kayaking Symposium, July 18-22, in Grand Marais. See downwindsports.com/glsks for more details.

If you are new to kayaking, consider attending. You won’t be sorry — and it could save your life.

We'll close ours by sharing the words of northern Michigan's own Song of the Lakes:

These are not lakes, these are the world's eighth seas, and her bottoms are littered with the wreckage of over 8,000 ships.

Try not to join them, OK? Don't treat Lake Michigan like a lake, she's a whole lot bigger than almost any lake in the world and demands your respect.

Photo credit: Winter Swirls on Sleeping Bear Point by Mark Lindsay

Ken shot this on Saturday night in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. He says that the brightness of the night sky is a reflection of iso and shutter speed (5 photos @ iso 1600 and 30 second exposures). Click to view larger on black!

This weekend (Feb 18 & 9) is a Michigan free fishing weekend - the perfect time to take to the ice (or open water) and try to land a local lunch! Michigan holds two of these weekends every year, one in February and the other in June.

Ken Scott shot this photo and also this cool video of ice fishing on North Lake Leelanau - check it out.

Dwell Magazine is having a contest to award $10,000 to one historical preservation effort that best rethinks the concept of preservation. Click here to vote for Fishtown Preservation! About this photo and the other ones they posted in Winter in Fishtown, the Fishtown Preservation Society writes:

The historical Leland, Michigan photographs below are from Erhardt Peters' original collection from the 1930s. Erhardt Peters was a prolific and talented photographer in the Ludington and Leelanau areas throughout much of the 20th century. During his career he generated thousands of black and white photos of Northern Michigan, but Leland and Fishtown were his particular favorites. There is a book called “Loving Leland” by David Peterson that features hundreds of Erhardt Peters photos. You can also purchase a CD of his photos from the Leelanau Historical Society.

The 4th Annual Great Indoor Folk Festival takes place this Sunday, February 12 in Building 50 at the Grand Traverse Commons. The festival runs from noon to 5:30, and it is family-friendly and free, though you're encouraged to donate through "busker buckets."

There will be 6 different stages with over 50 musicians on seven different stages. An article in this weeks Northern Express is well worth your time. They explain that the regional organization Songwriters in the Round is the driving force behind the event:

“It’s a community of really talented people. It’s an interactive family of musicians,” said Robin Lee Berry of Boyne City.

Berry will once again be part of the roster of performers. She will be singing and playing some of her original compositions along with some judiciously chosen covers.

“It’s a really wonderful experience,” said Berry. “I’ve been part of the Songwriters in the Round since its second year. It’s really brought a lot of musicians out of the woodwork.”

The list of performers is great, and many of them are from Leelanau - some highlights:  Louan Lechler, Robin Lee Berry, Kirby, Dane Hyde & Greg Stanton, Dennis Palmer & Allison Brown, Sister Wilene, Cabin Fever, Jim Crockett & Friends, Blind Dog Hank and Dede and the Dreamers.

About a week ago now I came across this photo by Mark Lindsay. I asked former Park Ranger Bill Herd, and he told me what has since come out in the media. From 140-year-old shipwreck piece washes ashore on remote stretch of Sleeping Bear Dunes beach in mLive:

Sleeping Bear Dunes historians believe the schooner fragment, estimated to be about 40-feet long and peppered with twisted metals spikes, is part of the ship’s bilge keelsons, which the Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archeology says were long timbers running most of the ship’s length, strengthening the keel.
It’s one of several fragments of the wreck to wash ashore over the years, said Laura Quackenbush, museum technician with park service. In fact, wreck fragments from the Jennie and Annie, as well as other ships which foundered off the dunes coastline, wash ashore once or twice a year.
“It’s a very dynamic shoreline,” she said. “It’s a common occurrence around there.”

Over the weekend photographer Ken Scott made the hike and posted the video below of the Jennie and Annie and also of the other (as yet nameless) wreck that we reported on last year.

Photo credit: Sleeping Bear Point Wreck by Mark Lindsay

Hey everyone, we're super sorry that we've been away so much. To try and make it up to you, we're going to give someone on our email list* a pair of tickets to the Traverse City Winter Microbrew and Music Festival tomorrow morning!! This year is the 3rd annual, and it takes place this Saturday February 11th at The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

The annual festival is produced by Porterhouse Productions and features over 40 breweries, wineries, cideries, and meaderies - most from Michigan - along with local food vendors and beer & food pairings. A highlight of the festival is a wide range of entertainment featuring Funktion, Heatbox, The Crane Wives, Whitney Morgan and the 78s, Dragon Wagon and Rootstand. There's also fire dancers, live polka music and a silent disco. Click the poster to the right for all the details, and as it's an outdoor festival (with tents) you know that fashion = warm! (ie: Carhart over Calvin Klein!)

*If you're not on our list sign up at the top right. If you don't want to get our weekly email, just post a comment on the Leelanau.com Facebook or send an email to andy@leelanau.com saying you want to win and we'll add you to the list we draw from!

Speaking of polka, here's one of the polka bands that will be at the Microbrew festival, Squeezebox. There's a little dancing, but nothing like what you'll probably see closer to the polka capital of the USA, Cedar Michigan.

Taking a truck loaded with people tearing around the Sleeping Bear Dunes would land you in jail. But long before the days of endangered pitcher thistle plants and piping plovers, back when most people thought that a fragile ecosystem was something you better pack with extra styrofoam, there were the Dune Rides.

It all began, according to the brochure:

"In 1935 Louis C. Warnes equipped a car with special motor and giant tires for personal pleasure trips into the vast sand lands near his home. Friends begged him to take passengers. Soon he added other cars and trained drivers...."

The website Oh Ranger! adds more detail, noting that Marion Warnes (D.H. Day's youngest daughter) was a gig part as well of Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile Rides out of Glen Haven.

They started the rides with a used 1934 Ford that took four people at a time to the crest of the dunes and back for 25 cents each. By the time the rides ended in 1978, there were 13 dunes wagons each carrying 14 passengers on a 12 mile, 35 minute excursion.

I haven't been able to find anything specifically on the "Dunesmobiles" themselves, but to the left is a photo of a Travelalls made by International Harvester. The book A Nationalized Lakeshore by Theodore J. Karamanski notes that Warnes, backed by his new ten-year concession agreement, purchased ten brand-new Oldsmobile 88 in 1956. They used balloon tires and the two that I've seen around Leelanau are both Olds 88s.

For over 40 years the Dunesmobiles rode over one of the most breathtaking landscapes in the world, bringing those to young, old or lazy to walk closer to the beauty that dwells in the heart of the Sleeping Bear. With the coming of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the days of the dune rides were numbered and in 1978 the dune rides ceased altogether.

Today, the trucks have been pressed into service by Manitou Island Transit and far fewer people get back into the "real" dunes. The result is certainly best for the health of the dunes, but it also means that for folks who won't journey more than a few hundred feet from their cars, memories of the Sleeping Bear Dunes will consist of a few runs up and down the dune climb.

There's a couple of photos from the brochure below and you can see some more (with a few from the dune rides at Silver Lake Dunes thrown in) from Don Harrison's postcards of the dunesmobiles. The photo above is Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile by Seeking Michigan (click to see it bigger!)

Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile Headquarters by UpNorth Memories

The Bear -- which has since disappeared

A "Dunesmobile" on the specially constructed gravel road