The Leelanau News Blog
leelanau county news • traverse city news • michigan news

Over on our Absolute Michigan web site, we're featuring Leelanau's own National Lakeshore in Dig Michigan: Sleeping Bear Dunes. It begins:

The October 21, 1970 Act of Congress that established the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore declared that "...the Congress finds that certain outstanding natural features, including forests, beaches, dune formations, and ancient glacial phenomena, exist along the mainland shore of Lake Michigan and on certain nearby islands in Benzie and Leelanau Counties, Michigan, and that such features ought to be preserved in their natural setting and protected from developments and uses which would destroy the scenic beauty and natural character of the area."

Before it's all over, you will have hopefully enjoyed the photos, maps and links and checked out 5 "must-do" ways to experience the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. (I'm hoping folks who know and love the Dunes can add many more tips for visitors!)

Check it out - I'm really happy with how it came out!

Photo: canyon of trees by metrolens

South Manitou Island is an uninhabited island just off the coast of west Leelanau County. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries the island was a popular harbor and fueling station. In the 1800s the island was inhabited by farmers - their buildings, equipment, schoolhouse, and cemetery still remain on the island today. The island now has many miles of trails crisscrossing the island, an inland lake, a beautiful lighthouse, and the Manitou Passage State Underwater Preserve. The longest trail on the island is 7.4 miles, with others as short as .6 miles.

The village on South Manitou Island was located in the natural harbor on the west side of the island. The strategic location of the island and the fact that it had one of the only protected deep water harbors between Chicago and Buffalo, made it ideal for refueling the steamers. As a result, it became the first settlement in the area. In 1847, the village included Burton's Warf, a house, blacksmith shop, grocery store, barn and a wooden tamarack railroad track extending from the Warf inland to haul wood for the steamers. The current village is located south of the original village near the Life-Saving Station and lighthouse. The houses in the village were used as summer cottages. The Visitor's Center is located in the former General Store.

Cool things to do: bike to the old farms on the island, hike all the many miles of trails, check out the lighthouse, walk to the Virgin Cedars and check out the shipwreck on the way, take a guided tour of the old settlements, swim, scuba dive to explore the wreck of the Morazan.

Watch out for Poison Ivy! It can be found all over the island, a way to help remember about Poison Ivy is this little rhyme: Leaves of three, let it be. Before you go check out Wikipedia: Poison Ivy to learn more about it. The Poison Ivy in Leelanau County is normally ground cover and not a shrub. As long as you do not touch the Poison Ivy you will be fine.

How to reach the island: you can take a personal boat, canoe or kayak (beware it is 8 miles of open water from Pyramid Point), or take the Manitou Transit. When you take the ferry and do not plan on camping you have 4 1/2 hours to tour the island.

Garrett Peltonen (Priority Health) won the men's race of the Tour de Leelanau with a time of 4:21:03. He finished just 18 seconds ahead of Ryan Roth (Kelly Benefit Strategies) and Scott Zwanski (Priority Health) finished third. In the women's race, Tina Pic (Priority Health) took the medal with a time of 3:17:58, defeating Laura van Gilder (UCI Cheerwine) in a photo finish with Julie Bellerose (Team Aberdeen) just 3 seconds behind.

They have posted complete results from the Tour de Leelanau web site, and we'll add links to other articles as they are published. Here's the Leelanau Enterprise story with some great photos. The article also says:

If things go as planned, the 2008 Tour de Leelanau will be held on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Brown said with the Tour de Missouri endurance race being held over an eight-day period in September 2008, most of the professional race teams would not be available to compete in the Tour de Leelanau if it continues to be held on the third Saturday in September.

The photo above is In the peleton by John Clement Howe and you can get some great photos of the Tour de Leelanau from Flickr (slideshow) and check out a video of the start of the men's 2007 Tour de Leelanau and also the Herman Rd King of the Mountain on YouTube.

Robert Dobbie from the Wolverine Sports Club Elite Road Team has an entertaining racer's account of the Tour de Leelanau that you should definitely read for passages like this:

Tower Rd (mile 60) seemed shorter but steeper than last year, but I had pretty good legs for it. I also got an extra boost from what seemed like a hundred fans gathered Tour de France style at the top. We passed through single file to the sound of ear-ringing cheers and clanging bells. That was fun.

The annual Tour de Leelanau bike race will be held next Saturday (Sep 15). The Tour de Leelanau is a point to point open road race for the top professional and amateur cyclists in the Midwest. The men's course is 109 miles long and starts in Leland at 1 PM. The women's race is 69 miles and starts at the Homestead around 2 - 2:30 PM. Both races wind all over the county and finish at the Leelanau Sands Casino in Peshawbestown.

This year's Tour de Leelanau is sanctioned by USA Cycling and held under permit by the United States Cycling Federation making it one of the nation's premier road biking races! You can get much, much more information at the Tour de Leelanau website and see more photos of Michigan's most scenic bicycle race at the tour de leelanau tag on Flickr (view slideshow) and also in the Tour de Leelanau group on Flickr.

On Wednesday night I attended a very interesting event hosted by the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners Association <lpwines.com> (LPVA) regarding ways that businesses and organizations in tourism-related fields can work together for mutual benefit. A few of the ideas discussed by representatives from the wineries, chambers, arts organizations and galleries, lodging and agricultural businesses and others included:

• More "cross-marketing" efforts to copy the successes of states like Wisconsin, Western North Carolina (Handmade In America) and industries like the cruise industry and deliver a more complete visitor experience.
• More events for the January - June period.
• Input from geographic communities and also business sectors along with the creation of new initiatives like Project Authentic Leelanau, CraftWORKS Leelanau, a Leelanau Art Gallery Trail, a Leelanau Agricultural/Culinary Trail and the Leelanau Tourism Initiative.
• Joining together to tell more people what a wonderful experience the Leelanau Peninsula offers.

Working with the LPVA's Rick Coates, we at Leelanau.com have pledged to provide a space for discussion of these efforts and for periodic reports from ongoing meetings with all kinds of organizations & communities.

In early 2007 Rick will be coordinating community-brainstorming sessions in each of the villages. These will be open to all interested in coordinating a peninsula wide effort. Check back here for dates and locations of these sessions.

Have an idea or a question? Don't be shy - post a comment! Too shy for that? Call Andy at 231-256-2829!

Photo credit: Little Girl at Port Onieda Beach by Jim Sorbie

A slow news day, so let's back-track to an announcement that the 2007 Tour de Leelanau will be included in the new USA Cycling Professional Tour.

According to the Record-Eagle, the 2007 Tour de Leelanau (planned for September 16, 2007) will be the final leg of the USA Cycling Professional Tour. The Tour will include 15 races in 11 states with 40 days of racing by the top foreign and domestic UCI professional teams.

In layman's terms, this means the 2007 Tour de Leelanau will be a very big deal indeed!

Read Cycling: Tour de Leelanau hits circuit in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.

You can click for more Tour de Leelanau and biking news, visit the Tour de Leelanau web site and also check out the USA Cycling web site.

I should probably be posting something about Northport School, the closure of 2 county recycling sites or news of a 25 mile non-motorized trailway proposed from Empire to Centerville township. (all great stories in this week's Enterprise)

Instead, here's a link to the results for the 2006 Tour de Leelanau from the Michigan Scene (nobody else seems to want to post the results online). The men's race was won by Eddy Hilger of Lookout Mtn, GA(racing for Priority Health) and the women's champ for the second straight year was Mackenzie Woodring of Grand Rapids (Priority Health/Ford).

I'd also like to direct your attention to the Tour de Leelanau photo pool set up by Joel Gaff. If you have photos of the Tour, please join Flickr and add them to the pool.

One of the neatest things about Flickr is that you can very easily geotag your photos and view them on a map - check out the map of the Tour de Leelanau photos!

While we're at it, here's a video of the pack racing through Leland by Chris Burda (that's Derek Prechtl from Empire out in front) and a video of the Tour de Leelanau finish. If you click the first, there's a couple more TDL videos available. Beware though! On YouTube you're never more than a click or two away from questionable videos!

News from the Week

The week's top story was a Leelanau Enterprise report that the executive committee of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners would consider a recommendation from the county’s Solid Waste Council to approve imposition of a $29 per-household fee in the seven townships where voters approved the surcharge and ask for a voluntary payment of the fee from residents of the townships that rejected the measure. According to this week's paper, it sounds as if this plan is moving forward. We also link to an interesting feature on Leelanau Independent Women for Democratic Action (LIWDA), a non-partisan, progressive, political action group.

The Week's Weather

We've had a lot of rain over the last week, and temps have been none too warm.

September 7, 2006: Mostly sunny & upper 70s (80Ëš/55Ëš)
September 8, 2006: Cloudy, rain & 70s (78Ëš/55Ëš)
September 9, 2006: Mostly cloudy, some rain & low 60s (62Ëš/48Ëš)
September 10, 2006: Partly cloudy & low 60s (64Ëš/37Ëš)
September 11, 2006: Mostly cloudy & low 60s (64Ëš/50Ëš)
September 12, 2006: Mostly cloudy, scattered showers & low 60s (62Ëš/53Ëš)
September 13, 2006: Cloudy, rain & upper 50s (60Ëš/53Ëš)

Click for the Leelanau News Archive for September 8-14, 2005.

Sleeping Bear Dunes, photo by Derek Graham

The 2006 Tour de Leelanau will be held next Saturday (Sep 16). The Tour de Leelanau is a point to point open road race for the top professional and amateur cyclists in the Midwest. The men's course is just over 100 miles long and starts in Leland at 10 AM. The women's race starts at the Homestead at 11:30 and is 66 miles.

You can get much, much more information at the Tour de Leelanau website and see more photos by Derek (and others) of Michigan's most scenic bicycle race by searching Tour de Leelanau on Flickr.