Tuesday, 9 of March of 2010
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Twitter: michiganwllz
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.
