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Ken shot this on Saturday in Omena. Check out his Omena slideshow for 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!

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.

Trish took this shot on Pyramid Point - check it out bigger and view it on her map.

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

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

 

The Glen Arbor Art Association offers several residencies each year for practicing artists who would like the opportunity for creative exploration in an idyllic setting in northern Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula. The purpose of the residency program is to provide visiting artists with a respite from daily responsibilities to enable them to concentrate on their work.

Participants use studio space provided at Thoreson Farm, a farmstead in the historic Port Oneida district of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. A small apartment is provided in the Art Association building in Glen Arbor at no charge for the residency period. Residencies are considered in writing, visual arts, photography, sculpture, fiber arts, ceramics, music, philosophy and creative research.

Applications may be submitted until March 1 for the 2012 season. For more details and how to apply, see their web site!

photo credit: The Road to Pyramid Point by Matt Callow> (produced during a GAAA residency!)

Ken caught the sunrise - click to see it bigger and check out Ken's snow slideshow!

This photo of the Northern Lights over Fishtown was taken by Ken Scott in October of 2011. Today on Absolute Michigan we posted a feature about a solar flare that may bring northern lights to Leelanau's skies tonight (and potentially over the next few days):

NASA's Space Weather site is the place to go for Aurora Borealis forecasting as they help make sense of the data the space agency receives about solar flares and their impact on earth's atmosphere. Yesterday they gave Northern Lights watchers a lot of hope with this news:

This morning, Jan. 23rd around 0359 UT, big sunspot 1402 erupted, producing a long-duration M9-class solar flare. The explosion's M9-ranking puts it on the threshold of being an X-flare, the most powerful kind. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare's extreme ultraviolet flash (shown right or in short movie right here)

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft detected a CME rapidly emerging from the blast site: movie. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the leading edge of the CME will reach Earth on Jan. 24 at 14:18UT (+/- 7 hours).

That means it's hitting the Earth 11 AM - 6 PM EST, but this level of intensity makes the Northern Lights a real possibility for the next couple of days so definitely LOOK UP tonight and tomorrow if there's any break in the clouds! If the northern lights hit, our Northern Lights Log will light up with reports. You can also learn a lot more about the Northern Lights at Michigan in Pictures and also at aurora borealis on Leelanau.com!