Fall color tours: It’s not too early to start planning your autumn getaway
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.