Michigan wllz

Amongst the Traverse City’s many charms, the area of small lakes southeast of town tends to get lost.

The area is centered on Arbutus and Spider lakes — two bodies of water that have more inlets, coves and islands than a young man could fully explore in a dozen years. Besides the big two, there are plenty of smaller lakes including High, Chandler and Rennie, not to mention numerous ponds.

But the main attraction for us are the gnarled roads which traverse the lakes. Prime among them is 6.3-mile-long Hobbs Highway, which runs from Garfield Road north to Supply Road.

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Sastry

TRAVERSE CITY — The technology that will power the Chevrolet Volt when it is expected to launch late next year is well known, but General Motors is betting that an Ann Arbor company is developing the battery that will power the car’s next generation.

Sakti3, an Ann Arbor startup company, is developing solid-state lithium-ion battery technology, which CEO Ann Marie Sastry says she hopes will replace the wet slurry lithium ion technology that will go into the Volt’s high-tech battery.

Sastry was part of the Advanced Powertrain panel at Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminar autos conference in Traverse City. Sakti3 is a spinoff business from the University of Michigan, where Sastry is professor of material sciences.

The Volt will use a lithium-ion battery to power the vehicle for up to 40 miles before a gasoline engine generator starts to power the vehicle through the electric motors. Owners will be able to recharge the car from an electrical outlet. GM believes that most owners will not have to use the gasoline engine for their daily commute. When longer trips are necessary, the gasoline engine will provide range similar to other gasoline-powered vehicles.

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TRAVERSE CITY — Future vehicles will be connected in ways some people never thought possible, but it’s a treacherous road those in the industry are traveling.

Panelists speaking at the Center for Automotive Research’s annual Management Briefing Seminars autos conference agreed that liability and driver distraction issues need to be resolved as the technology moves forward.

But there are no concrete answers now, said Tim Johnson, who works on in-vehicle connectivity and telematics for Sprint Nextel.

“It’s an enormously important question right now,” Johnson said. “We need to find a way that (information) can be ingested sensibly and safely inside the vehicle.”

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The Cherry Bowl Drivein Theatre near Honor, Mich.

During a recent visit to the Traverse City area, we went to the Cherry Bowl drive-in west of Honor for a double feature of “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” and “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.”

The Cherry Bowl plays on it’s the ’50s-era nostalgia in a big way. The buildings, including the snack bar/projection room and the ticket office look like they probably haven’t changed a bit since it opened on Independence Day, 1953. A great tradition at the Cherry Bowl are the ‘50-era intermission ads that play between the two features.

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When it comes to scenic drives, the area around Traverse City is hard to beat. But one particularly special stretch stands above all the rest.

The drive up Old Mission Peninsula — an 18-mile-long finger that separates Grand Traverse Bay into West Bay and East Bay — is the premier scenic drive in the Michigan.

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If there’s one thing Traverse City knows how to do, it’s remove snow. Same goes for the city’s airport, Cherry Capital Airport.

Check out the sign on the little tractor driving along in front of the big monster in the back. It says “Other airports’ snow removal equipment.” The big one in back says “Cherry Capital Airport snow removal equipment.”

Nothing like a little trash talking among airport maintenance crews.

http://www.tvcairport.com/index.php