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
Located in the heart of the Leelanau Peninsula, Lake Leelanau is a pristine lake running through almost the entire county. Lake Leelanau appears to be two lakes, and is even referred to as North Lake Leelanau and South Lake Leelanau, but the two lakes are connected by what is known as "The Narrows," a narrowing of the lake that looks like a river. The village of Lake Leelanau is located at the narrows. South Lake Leelanau is the shallower and warmer lake of the two, but both are breathtakingly beautiful and from top to bottom the North and South Lake total about 22 miles in length.
Lake Leelanau's water levels rose 12 feet when a dam was built on the Carp River (which connects Lake Leelanau to Lake Michigan) in 1854.
Cool things to do: boat around the lake (rent one from Stander Marine in Leland), swim (public access spots: Nedow's Bay, East Leland Park (on 641 at the northern end of North Lake Leelanau), Fisher "Fudgie" Beach (just south of Leland on M-22) Schneider's Beach (at the end of Popp Road (off M-204) 1.5 miles west of the village of Lake Leelanau), fish, or just hang out.
Head into Lake Leelanau for some fantastic vegetarian food and great antique shopping, Cedar for the best processed meat in the area and some great local ice cream inventions, or Leland for great shopping, delicious food, and much more.
According to the Leelanau Conservancy "Glen Lake, framed by a dramatic rise of Sleeping Bear to the west, and surrounded by high-forested moraines to the east and south, presents one of the most recognizable landscapes in Michigan. The waters of Glen Lake are so pure that with increasing depth, on a clear day the water colors shift from sandy hues of the shallows through aquamarine to some of the deepest blue known anywhere." A better description of Glen Lake cannot be found.
Local legend says that Glen Lake was recognized as "the most beautiful lake in the world" by National Geographic Magazine, (the magazine denies ever having published such a ranking), but anyone who has cast their eyes upon this body of water would agree with the legend. Glen Lake actually consists of two lakes: Big Glen and Little Glen, with a bridge that stretches over the narrow bit of water connecting the two. Little Glen Lake is below the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and Big Glen is less than a mile away from the town of Glen Arbor.
Cool things to do: canoe or kayak (rent one from Crystal River Outfitters), sail, paddle, or just hang out on a pontoon (rent them from On the Narrows Marina), waterski, wakeboard, wakeskate, or tube (rent the equipment and boat from Glen Craft Marina), or just relax in the water at the public access sites on the lake.
Check out the Glen Lake Association for in depth info about Glen Lake.
The Glen Lake Yacht Club is a great way to meet people and enjoy your favorite summer sports, from sailing to tennis.
Head into Glen Arbor for some great food and shopping.
The Leelanau Conservancy recently completed a purchase that will expand the protected areas along Victoria Creek (Cedar River) to a total of 300 acres with over two miles of Lake Leelanau shoreline and connecting channels along the waterways within the Solon Swamp wetland complex (scroll down and click the small map to view the protected areas).
“Purchasing the property was like putting in a key piece of a puzzle,” adds Price. “Now, both banks of the Cedar River from the village of Cedar all the way down to Lake Leelanau are owned by either the State or the Conservancy and open to the public to explore and enjoy.” The new acquisition is strategic for another reason: the property includes about eight acres of dry upland along Co. Rd. 645, just east of the Village of Cedar, which will be the first access point along a public road north of the Cedar River and only the third road-access point into about 1,500 acres of Pere Marquette State Forest. Conservancy ownership of the 100 acres will allow the public to directly access 275 adjacent acres of State Forest which were previously inaccessible on foot because of the river.
The forested wetlands on the property are thick with northern white cedar, hemlock and spruce and with a large pocket of mature tamaracks in the 24 acres south of the river. This land has tremendous ecological value,” says Matt Heiman, a Conservancy land protection specialist who worked on the project. While a complete inventory of plant and animal species on the property will have to wait for the winter to unlock its grip, nearby land within the Cedar River Natural Area contains over 100 species of plants, including such gems as the carnivorous yellow pitcher plant, along with other species that grow in the most extensive and least-disturbed wetlands. Heiman adds that the land is part of a very large and diverse complex of forested swamp, cattail marsh, and freshwater fens, all connected by stream corridors.
Here's a cool video from the tail-end of last winter. There's still a lot of ice boating going on!
Yesterday at The Leland Report Molly Grosvenor wrote:
This morning George Firestone Grosvenor, our Bumpa, passed away. He went peacefully in the company of his children and with the kind assistance of all the great people at Effie's Place. This truly marks the end of an era. I know that many people have a story or two or many about Bumpa. It's great comfort to know that he will live on in these stories... may we all keep telling them. May the seas be calm in heaven! In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the South Manitou Island Memorial Society's project "relight the light" or to Munson Hospice.
You can share your memories here or over at the Leland Report's tribute to George Grosvenor. George captained boats that went to the islands, most recently the Manitou Isle to North Manitou. My favorite tales from him were those of delivering the mail across the ice to the Manitou Islands. He said his dad would tie a rope to him and make him walk in front of the mail truck as they crossed the ice.
Was it true? I don't know but I do know he was a great guy who will be missed.
Photo credit: NMI Pickup by migolfer who writes: North Manitou Island. For those of you old enough to remember the island pickup/dropoff point off the beach by Bourniques. This was before the fancy dock they put in. If the weather was bad, the drop off point was on the south beach off The Big Windfall. The boat is the "Manitou Isle".
John Levanen took this photo titled If you're bored on a Sunday afternoon in Leelanau County...
It demonstrates the time-honored tradition of "berging" down the Carp River in Leland from North Lake Leelanau to a stopping point that is curiously close to the Blue Bird.
Keith Burnham over at The Leland Report has complete coverage of Berging the River Carp - 2008 including a trial run on Saturday, and the photos from 2007, 2006 and 2005.
The staff of the Leelanau Enterprise identified three significant trends that emerged during 2007 in Leelanau County. The slumping housing market's effect on Leelanau developments and how township emergency services are changing were two, with low water levels in Lake Michigan and Leelanau’s inland lakes.
Recent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reports indicate that a new record low for Lake Michigan is a likely prospect and the Enterprise talked with a couple folks including Inland Seas Captain Tom Kelly about it:
Unlike 22 years ago when news stories simply attributed high water levels to their most visible culprit — lots of rain — the low levels of today have been blamed on a number of factors. Three have stood out: effects from global warming, a massive dredging effort by the Army Corps in the 1960s to improve shipping lanes in Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River, and a simple explanation that the latest fluctuation is part of the natural rise and fall of the Great Lakes.
Kelly, a scientist with a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, has the personal history to believe the simple explanation and the scientific background to give credence to a global climate change theory. But he doesn’t believe the dredging project more than 40 years ago is the reason as a recent underground mapping showed no signs of an eroding lake bottom, and the lakes reached all-time highs after the project.
Read Steady decline in lake levels: Sad fact of life in the Enterprise.
Photo: Do Not Tie Lines by Andy McFarlane
This week's Leelanau Enterprise has a cool feature titled 'Pigboats' once called on G-T Bay that includes a nice old photo and gives the history of this vanished class of Great Lakes vessel.
They were called pigboats not because they carried pigs, but because they had a distinctive pig-like bow.
The unique form of Great Lakes vessel was invented by Captain Alexander McDougall. Altogether, 40-some were built on the lakes between the years 1888-98.
For a number of years, they were so closely identified with the Great Lakes that some people thought all the lakes ships were whalebacks, even though the “pigs” never constituted more than a small fraction of the large inland fleet.
Photo credit: Glass negative of a whaleback freighter or "pigboat" from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress (LC-B2- 5328-14). See more photos of whalebacks/pigboats at the Library of Congress including this painting that gives you a better view of the "snout" of a pigboat.
Here's a photo from last week. Not many hours later, Leland Harbor was clocking sustained winds of 45 MPH and flying the flag with the black square on it.
Storm Warning
Formerly known as a "whole gale" warning, this signifies winds of 48 knots or more, or 48 to 63 knots (55 to 73 mph) in the case of a tropical cyclone.
The only bigger flag in their arsenal is the Hurricane Warning, and they don't fly that on the Great Lakes, at least as far as I can tell from this page on coastal warnings at NOAA.
