Sunday, 14 of March of 2010
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By Lori Payne
Correspondent
ALPENA — People who enjoy romance, history, ghost stories and shipwrecks are drawn to lighthouses. Why? Because lighthouses can give you all that and more.
The Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival in Alpena is the place for those who love the sentinels of the lake.
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The "Li'l Red" Alpena Lighthouse is visible from the marina breakwater at the mouth of the Thunder Bay River.
ALPENA — If you love lighthouses, make plans to visit the Great Lakes Lighhouse Festival this weekend.
Michigan is home to more than 100 lighthouses and Alpena is located within an hour’s drive of several of them. For the really adventures, there are even boat or aerial trips to see Alpena’s two lights located on off-shore islands.
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Click here to to read the story about the Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival.
1) Tawas Point Lighthouse – 1.989.362.5041
Off U.S. 23 on Tawas Beach Road, Tawas City, MI
2) Sturgeon Point Lighthouse and Museum 1.989.724.6297
Off U.S. 23 North of Harrisville on Sturgeon Point Road.
3) Alpena Light (Lil’ Red) – Viewing from Thunder Bay Marina, Located at
the Mouth of the Thunder Bay River, Alpena, MI.
4) Old Presque Isle Lighthouse – 1.989.595.6979
New Presque Isle Lighthouse – 1.989.595.9917
both lighthouses located off U.S. 23 on Grand Lake Road
5) 40 Mile Point Lighthouse – 1.989.734.45.87
6 Miles North of Rogers City, South of Manitou Beach Road
A hillside above Lake Leelanau, last September.
We get a lot of calls from people – an unbelievable number of calls, actually – asking when the peak fall color season will be this year. And the really honest answer is the one nobody wants to hear, which is: “Heck, we don’t know!”
This is a complicated place, weather-wise – and when it comes to fall color, that’s actually a good thing. Thanks to our coastal location and diverse landscape, the fall color season around Traverse City usually lasts a bit longer than in neighboring areas. Color changes usually begin in mid-September in the higher elevations south and east of Grand Traverse Bay, especially the steep inland valleys of the Boardman, Jordan and Manistee rivers. By the end of the month, when those areas are experiencing peak colors, the coastal forests along the Lake Michigan shoreline and the larger inshore lakes are just beginning to show good coloration and can often continue to grow in intensity well into October.
So, a good time to come is between mid-September and mid-October. Usually. On the other hand, here we are in mid-September and the color’s only just getting started. So who knows? This year maybe it could last into November. Wouldn’t that be something?
Read more of Mike Norton’s blog at blog.visittraversecity.com/
Nestled against the twin fjords of East and West Grand Traverse Bay, the Lake Michigan resort community of Traverse City is surrounded by dense northern hardwoods that glow brilliantly in the light of an autumn evening.
By MIKE NORTON
TRAVERSE CITY -– Bela Barner loves the great outdoors. In fact, the Chicago native hopes to visit every national park in the United States some day. But when fall comes around, his favorite destination is the rolling landscape of forests, dunes and deep blue water around Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay.
“I love the cooler weather and fall colors,” Barner says. “Northern Michigan in fall is heavenly.”
Barner is especially fond of the magnificent Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, about 20 miles west of Traverse City, whose steep hillsides and lush hardwood forests burst into sheets of flaming scarlet, orange and gold each fall. Set against the deep indigo of Lake Michigan, the towering bluffs and islands of Sleeping Bear are particularly dramatic when clothed in their autumn finery.
But the Traverse City area abounds in such places. Its characteristic landscape of rolling glacial ridges, lush forests and wide expanses of open water makes the perfect canvas for nature’s annual fall masterpiece. In this glacier-sculpted setting with its wide panoramas, autumn color is simply the finishing touch to a dramatic vista of water, sand and sky.
HUBBARD LAKE — My mom calls it the saddest day of the year.
All over Hubbard Lake, trucks pulling empty boat trailers head to the boat ramp while someone else gets to take the last boat ride of the summer.
Yes, I know, summer doesn’t “officially” end until Sept. 21, but tell that to everyone trying to squeeze in one last bit of fun on the unofficial end of summer.
Tuesday morning, most of the kids will head back to school, and parents will have sad emotions mixed with a bit of glee that the rugrats will be occupied for seven hours a day, five days a week for most of the next nine months.
Ready to start seeing these signs on Michigan’s highways?
LUZERNE — My friend Derrick likes to say that every one of our canoe trips has its stories of misery that make each one memorable.
There was the year we paddled the Escanaba and we had snow flurries — in May. Another time, one of our intrepid canoeists was paddling a canoe without a partner on the Pine near Wellston, got the boat hung up on a tree and it ended up pressed against the trunk by the force of the current. Or how about the time it rained so hard on the Pine that I’m surprised we didn’t drown because there didn’t seem to be any air space between the raindrops. Yep, good times.
As far as misery goes, last weekend’s trip, our first on Michigan’s most celebrated river, the Au Sable, doesn’t rank as high as those gems. But constant drizzle and mist can be pretty miserable when sitting in a canoe for four-plus hours followed by a few more hours sitting around the campfire. OK, it’s true that our base camp was a popup trailer, so we had a roof available to us. But where’s the fun in that? Besides, then we wouldn’t get to complain about sitting around the campfire in the drizzle.
The Big Sable River. Photos by Bryan Laviolette
This is the third in a series about tourist destinations on the west side of the state.
LUDINGTON — They call her the Queen of the State Parks, and for good reason.
Ludington State Park is one of the crown jewels of Michigan’s excellent system of state parks. Only Mackinac Island surpasses Ludington amongst all of the parks in the state system.
What makes it so popular? Location, location, location.
The park is sandwiched between Lake Michigan and Hamlin Lake, with its facilities centered around what used to be the lumber town of Hamlin. The Lake Michigan beach is popular for those who like the wind in their hair and the power of the Big Lake. Those seeking a calmer beach experience gravitate to the Hamlin beach.
Ludington State Park officials want to relocate the Great Lakes Visitors Center to the historic beachhouse after heavy snow caused part of the existing center's roof to collapse. Photos by Bryan Laviolette
The existing Great Lakes Visitors Center
LUDINGTON — For years, staff members at Ludington State Park fought with the poorly designed Great Lakes Visitors Center. The building, set into the side of a hill with a strange roof design, was such a problem that last year, officials started dreaming of replacing it.
Their plan was to renovate the park’s historic 1935 beachhouse which overlooks the park’s wide, sandy beach on Lake Michigan. The state provided grant money to have an architect make a proposal which would move the visitors center to the beachhouse.
Then in March, heavy snow caused the collapse of part of the existing visitors center roof. Officials said that the entire building shifted, making it unsafe. The state, which is self-insured, is still debating whether to fix the building or move the visitors center to the beachhouse.
