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A-mazing times in the Fall Cornfields this Year!

Monday, August 30th, 2010

: This year’s design at Jacob’s Corn Maze

By MIKE NORTON

What a wonderful weekend we had here in Traverse City! Usually this is the time of year when things quiet down - kids are going back to school and everybody knows there’s time for one more “last hurrah” on Labor Day. But the last few weekends have been amazing, between the warm summery weather and the scores of new festivals and celebrations - the Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, the Third Coast Bicycle Festival and the Traverse City Summer Microbrew & Music Festival.

And there’s more coming soon - including a bigger, better version of the Michigan Schooner Festival on Sept 10-12, the Detroit Red Wings Training Camp (Sept. 18-21) and NHL Prospects Tournament (Sept. 11-15) and an all new community festival in Acme on Sept. 24-25 I’ll give you some updates on those next week, but in the meantime it’s hard to ignore that fall is, ahem, on its way.

Although we’re weeks away from the real color change, you can already see a touch of early red and orange on some of the trees. I looked down the beach last night and saw a solitary poplar lit by the setting sun that was just blazing gold. The peaches and apples in the Old Mission orchards are getting riper each day. And just the other morning I saw that Jacob’s Corn Maze is open for business.

I don’t know if you’ve been up to Jacob’s yet, but it’s a wonderful; addition to our fall lineup. Mike Witkop and his family have turned their 19th-century farm west of town into a corn maze, converting 10 acres of corn - an area as large as 10 football fields — into a massive labyrinth with three distinct trail systems. Once inside, visitors are free to lose themselves on 4.5 miles of winding, twisting paths whose green cornstalk walls are 6 to 10 feet high. Witkop named the place Jacob’s Corn Maze in honor of his great grandfather, a Dutch sea captain who settled here in 1892.

Although farm kids have always enjoyed getting themselves lost in cornfields, the advent of the high-tech corn maze is a relatively recent phenomenon — the first was created in Pennsylvania in 1993 - but they’ve been quickly spreading across the American heartland. Farmers typically pay a professional maze-maker to create a customized labyrinth that changes from year to year, often incorporating a design that can be seen only from the air. (This year’s design at Jacobs features a T. Rex and an erupting volcano.)

Some mazes include puzzles, treasure maps or other enhancements - Jacob’s has included a new mystery game this year called Farm Scene Investigation (FSI). (There is a link on their website to a YouTube video that sets the stage for the experience.

One of the things I really like about Jacob’s is that they’re already running several fundraisers for local charities. Last weekend they held a special “Amazing Race” event for Bethany Kids, and on each weekend in September, they donate a dollar out of every paid admission to a different charity — Single Momm, Child & Family Services, Operation Christmas Child and the Father Fred Foundation.

Jacob’s Corn Maze is open five days a week until Oct. 31. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursdays, Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 1-7 p.m. The farm is at 7100 E. Traverse Highway (M-72 west) 3.5 miles west of Traverse City. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for children 3-11 and free to children under 3. (They also have special $7 rates for groups of 20 or more.

For more information, log on to www.jacobs-corn-maze.com or call 231-632-MAZE.

Tags: Jacob's Corn Maze, Traverse City
Posted in Fall, Festivals, Traverse City, Uncategorized | No Comments »

More Festivals…. and a Quiet Walk Along the River

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

A great blue heron fishes in the Boardman near Sabin Pond.

By MIKE NORTON
Well, once again there are big doings in Traverse City this week, as the Traverse City Summer Microbrew & Music Festival gets underway on the front lawn of The Village at Grand Traverse Commons, and cyclists from around the Midwest converge for the grand finale of the Third Coast Bicycle Festival - the extremely cool Cherry Roubaix Bike Race through the cobbled streets of the Central Neighborhood and the hills of western Leelanau County.

I was mentioning this latest batch of festivals to my wife the other day. “Is there any weekend when there isn’t something going on around here?” she asked. “How can anybody be bored in this town?”

Good question. Some people will still complain that there’s nothing worth doing or seeing or eating or drinking in northern Michigan because that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. We all know people like that. (The other travel bores I love are the ones who always say things like, “Traverse City’s all right, I suppose. But it used to be much better before they ruined it.” Which means, of course, “before people like you started coming here.”) On the other hand, there are people who think there’s just too much going on around here these days - that there are just too many darned festivals.

Personally, I like this idea of having lots of small celebrations and parties spread around through the whole year. I think they’re a lot easier to deal with, and they help introduce people to Traverse City in ways and times that might not have occurred to them before. But the coolest thing about this place is that even on the busiest days of the summer season, you can find wide-open spaces of peace, quiet and beauty here - even close to the heart of town - where you can relax and recharge.

I was thinking about that last week when I took off to shoot some photographs of the Boardman River. Most of the time, I think of the Boardman as our “urban river,” since it flows under highway bridges and between concrete walls in its last half-mile run through downtown to the Bay. And sometimes I think of the pristine Boardman you find up above the Brown Bridge Pond, a Blue Ribbon trout stream that looks wild enough to be in the Upper Peninsula or even Ontario. But I’d forgotten how beautiful and fierce the river is just outside the city limits, in the splendid Grand Traverse Natural Education Reserve, just south of Airport Road.

As I walked those shady trails and gazed down at the newly-liberated rapids below me, watching woodpeckers and orioles, swans and herons, I was amazed at the natural richness and diversity of this tight little valley. But the truly amazing thing is that this is not some pristine wilderness that’s been protected by isolation from the plundering hordes - it’s a river that was thoroughly deforested, dammed and exploited in its day, that even now runs between two of the city’s busiest highways. And yet, there it is: a testament to the resilience of the natural order.

Staghorn sumac and evening primrose on the steeop Boardman banks.

Staghorn sumac and evening primrose on the steep Boardman banks.

Today you can hike the network of well-maintained trails on both sides of the valley, passing the crumbled ruins of an old dam and the quieted dynamos of others that are slated for future removal. You can kayak through some of the most exciting rapids in the Lower Peninsula, watch otters and muskrats at play in the water, or learn about native wildflower plantings at the fascinating new Boardman River Nature Center on Sabin Road. It’s a wonderful, restful place. And it’s what - a ten-minute drive from downtown?

The travel bores are wrong. Traverse City’s best days are ahead of her, not behind her — this place just keeps getting better.

Tags: Add new tag, Boardman River, Third Coast Bicycle Festival, Traverse City Microbrewery & Music Festival
Posted in Festivals, Hiking, Outdoor Sports, Parks, Uncategorized, Water, Wildlife | 2 Comments »

Whew! Cooler Weather — Just in Time for the TC Wine & Art Festival and the Third Coast Bicycle Festival!

Monday, August 16th, 2010

A group tour of the Old Mission Peninsula, one of many activities offered at next week's inaugural Third Coast Bicycle Festival.

By MIKE NORTON

OK, I like a little hot weather now and then, but I’ve got to admit that I was REALLY getting tired of the 90-plus-degree weather and high humidity we had during the first part of August. I’m just glad we had the Bay to jump into whenever it got too uncomfortable! Thankfully, things are back to normal now: in the high 70s with fresh dry breezes from the west.

Perfect weather for drinking wine, contemplating artworks and cycling around the beautiful Traverse City area, you might say. Which is great, because Saturday brings the return of the Traverse City Wine & Art Festival at the Grand Traverse Commons. And on Sunday, the week-long Third Coast Bicycle Festival gets underway.

The 2010 Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, which will be held from 3-10 p.m., bills itself as “a landmark celebration of the wine, food and culture of Michigan’s wine coast,” with vintages from 22 wineries of the Leelanau Peninsula, Old Mission Peninsula and Traverse City. Ten restaurants from Traverse City and Leelanau will be serving food & desserts, with music and performance headlined by Larry McCray, Greg Nagy, Song of the Lakes Trio, May Erlewine & Seth Bernard, and artwork from three arts organizations and over 60 regional artists!

In spite of some less than inspiring weather, last year’s inaugural festival attracted 2,500 people, so this year’s event should be even more well-attended. Tickets are limited and can be purchased online at traversecitywinefestival.com for $20 each. You can get detailed information at www.traversecitywinefestival.com or by calling (231) 421-1172.

This new Bicycle Festival looks even more interesting. What began three years ago as a one-day bicycle race has morphed into a week-long extravaganza of cycling, with free organized rides through the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas, seminars, sprints, hill climbs, single-track backcountry rides, bicycle art, a Michigan Framebuilder’s Expo, trackstand and polo competitions– and even a bicycle film night.

On Friday, there’ll be a kid’s bike rodeo and sprint races in conjunction with Friday Night Live, our weekly downtown block party. But Saturday will be the big day, with the Third Annual Cherry Roubaix Criterium Race, held on the cobblestoned streets of Traverse City’s Central Neighborhood, just two blocks from downtown. That evening, two events — the Hell Yes Roller Sprints and the Twin Bays Cyclocross Race — will be held at The Grand Traverse Commons in conjunction with the Second Annual TC Microbrew and Music Festival. On Sunday, the action moved out to the backroads of the Leelanau Peninsula, for the Cherry Roubaix Road Race, a “Tour de France style” race through some of the most beautiful countryside in the Midwest.

Want more information? Go to www.tcbikefest.org

Tags: Third Coast Bicycle Festival, Traverse City, Traverse City Wine & Art Festival
Posted in Arts and Culture, Festivals, Food & Drink, Outdoor Sports, Summer, Traverse City, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Next Saturday: Lunch with Carter, Dinner With Mario

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Carter on West Bay near his Old Mission Peninsula Home

By MIKE NORTON

Traverse City has had an amazing summer so far - and there’s no sign of a letup anytime soon. After a weekend of near-perfect weather for the inaugural Paella in the Park food/wine/music event sponsored by the Wineries of the Old Mission Peninsula you’d have thought the town was going to give itself a bit of a rest.

But, Noooo…

This coming Saturday we’ll all have to choose which national media celebrity to eat with. Will it be famous Food Network chef Mario Batali, who’ll be hosting a major gourmet dinner on the lawn at the Grand Traverse Commons? Or will it be Traverse City’s homegrown handyman/heartthrob Carter Oosterhouse, star of HGTV and TLC, who’s invited everyone to come out and celebrate the new playground he and his crew are building in Greilickville.

Actually, it’s possible to do both, since the playground party is more of a picnic lunch (it runs from noon to 3 p.m.) and Mario’s dinner doesn’t get rolling until 5 and lasts until 10. But that’s a lot of food.

Carter, who broke out on his own after starring in TLC’s hit series “Trading Spaces,” has always had a soft spot in his heart for youngsters. His nonprofit organization, Carter’s Kids, works to fight childhood obesity by building playgrounds and organizing events that encourage exercise and healthy living. The group helped organize support for the new harbor park in Greilickville (just north of the Traverse City limits along the West Bay shore) and got a big boost in the arm from the family of Ken and Faye Shaw and the Schmuckal Family Foundation, which donated the money to make it happen.

More than 40 volunteers helped build the new playground, which includes a boardwalk, new restrooms, pavilions, and a bridge across the nearby creek. A bunch of local businesses have chipped in to provide food for the ribbon-cutting picnic.

Mario Batali, star of such popular foodie shows as “Molto Mario” and “Ciao America,” is one of the most recognizable chefs in America. (He was named Man of the Year in the chef category by GQ magazine in 1999, won the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: New York City award in 2002 and was award Outstanding Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in 2005. Unlike Carter Oosterhouse, he isn’t from around here - but he seems to have adopted the area as his “home away from home” in recent years, and he readily agree to help local organizers of the National Writers Series, who wanted to put on a dinner event featuring dishes inspired by recipes in his cookbooks.

Although most of the cooking will be done by chefs from The Cook’s House and Epicure Catering (world-famous mixologist Bridget Albert will also be there to create a signature Traverse City cocktail exclusively for the event), Mario will be on hand for do interviews and an interactive audience Q&A. The evening will close with music and dancing.

Mario Batali chats with a fan at a local cookbook-signing event.

Tickets for “An Evening with Mario Batali” go on sale Friday, July 9 online at www.nationalwritersseries.org and www.porterhouseproductions.com. Tickets range from $35-$99 and include two full plates of Batali food entrees (10 recipes total), cash bar, gelato station, live entertainment, an interactive audience Q&A with Batali and access to all event activities. Signed copies of Batali’s cookbooks will be available for purchase at the event.

Tags: Carter Oosterhouse, Mario Batali, Traverse City
Posted in Festivals, Food & Drink, Traverse City, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Traverse City Film Festival Starts this Week!

Monday, July 26th, 2010

The State Theatre on Front Streeet -- headquarters for the Traverse City Film Festival

By MIKE NORTON

What a splendid Sunday! A beautiful day for the beach, capped by a full moon rising pink and lilac over the Bay! And today when I arrived at work, there were tents and booths popping up at the Open Space park - all getting ready for the start of the Traverse City Film Festival, which runs from July 27 to Aug. 1

Summertime is “outside time” in Traverse City, so it might seem odd that one of our most popular summer festivals takes place almost entirely indoors. Founded in 2005, the Film Festival has been able to lure movie buffs away from the beaches and golf courses with an outstanding selection of independent, foreign, and documentary films, as well as premieres, parties, panel discussions and lectures about the world of film.

Most events are held near downtown — at the vintage State Theatre, the City Opera House, and the Old Town Playhouse - but there are also free family movies shown each night at an outdoor screen at the Open Space, on the shore of West Grand Traverse Bay. This year’s festival features over 100 films. And for the first time this year, instructors from the University of Michigan will be here teaching filmmaking classes and serving as moderators, panelists and jurors.

The festival kicks-off Tuesday with two brand-new films: Focus Features’ “The Kids Are All Right” starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore, and the Weinstein Co.’s John Lennon biopic, “Nowhere Boy.” Speaking of the Beatles, this year is the 40th anniversary of their breakup - an event that will be commemorated with a screening of rare prints of “A Hard Days Night” and “Help!”

The free outdoor family Films on the Bay this year include “Twister,” “Finding Nemo,” “Help!,” “Raising Arizona,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Mary Poppins.”

Admission prices to regular movies are $9.50. Opening and closing night films are $25, with opening and closing night parties ticketed separately at $50. You can check out the entire festival schedule at www.traversecityfilmfestival.org.

Tags: Traverse City Film Festival
Posted in Festivals, Summer, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Few Bears — but Lots of Other Wildlife at Sleeping Bear Dunes

Monday, July 19th, 2010

First, I spotted this tiny piping plover near the mouth of the Platte...

By MIKE NORTON

I headed down to the Deadstream Swamp along the upper Platte River last week to check out stories about bears hanging around the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. And although I didn’t see the bears themselves, I talked with several people who’d been seeing them regularly.

In spite of its name, Sleeping Bear isn’t a place where you’re likely to encounter bears in the wild. They’re around - especially at the southern end of the park - but they’re normally shy creatures who tend to stay away from people.

On the other hand, Sleeping Bear is a wonderful place to spot lots of other animals, from white-tail deer and porcupines to bald eagles and coyotes. In fact, coming face to face with wildlife is one of the thrills of visiting this beautiful place.

Because of its rich interplay of natural habitat of vast dunes, lakes, streams, hardwood forests and cedar swamps, Sleeping Bear is home to many kinds of animals and birds — including a number of species that are threatened or endangered. It’s not at all uncommon to come face to face with them while driving, hiking or paddling through the park, or to be serenaded by frogs and coyotes at night. You may even catch a sight of the elusive cougar, a creature whose presence in this part of the country is still being hotly debated.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes take their name from a charming Native American legend about a mother bear and her two cubs who perished while swimming across the lake to escape a forest fire. Bears are not unknown in the park, but they’re rare and solitary animals who aren’t often seen. Much more common are forest creatures like deer, fox, porcupines, squirrels, bats, and raccoons, while the rivers and inland lakes are home to otter, beaver, muskrat and mink.

In all, 50 species of mammals can be found here. Most are small and numerous - like the eastern chipmunk, nicknamed the “timber tiger” because of its voracious appetite and fearlessness in stealing food from campsites and picnic tables. A much rarer predator that haunts the park’s more remote areas is the bobcat, a small wild cat whose effective camouflage make it hard to see.

Cougars, all but wiped out in Michigan early in the 20th century, may now be making a comeback. And although the presence of the big cats at Sleeping Bear has still not been officially recognized, people report seeing them every year — and park rangers now post warning signs to let hikers know what to do if they encounter one on the trail.

...then, moments later, this deer emerged from the woods only a few yards away.

Bird life is also plentiful at the park. So far 240 species of birds have been identified here, and birders flock to Sleeping Bear each year in hopes of catching sight of another rare specimen. The waters attract large numbers of loons, ducks, cormorants, herons and kingfishers, as well as rare trumpeter swans and sandhill cranes during migration season. The woodlands are home to warblers, thrushes, hawks and owls, while the open meadows provide welcome habitat for bald eagles and threatened sandpipers, bobolinks and grasshopper sparrows.

Two species in particular have found a special refuge at Sleeping Bear. The Prairie Warbler, one of Michigan’s most threatened birds, nests in the juniper scrublands just inshore from the park’s Lake Michigan beaches, while the beach itself is home to the Piping Plover - a charming little shorebird whose existence is threatened by coastal development. Each year, park rangers rope off sections of beach so the plucky little plovers can lay their eggs in the sand without fear that they’ll be stepped on by unwary sunbathers.

The plant life of the dunes is every bit as fascinating as the animals who live here, since the vegetation at Sleeping Bear is specially adapted to survive in the sandy dunes and beaches with their constant wind and blowing sand, their hot, dry summers and freezing winters. There are succulents like sea rocket, tough leathery shrubs like bearberry (a relative of the western Manzanita), and pitcher’s thistle, a rare deep-rooted thistle with silvery leaves and flowers. The dunes are also home to several “ghost forests” - eerie groves of trees that were buried long ago by blowing sand and uncovered years later by the same incessant winds.

In spite of the near-desert conditions, vegetation at Sleeping Bear is unusually lush because of the nearby waters of Lake Michigan, which keeps the air cooler in summer, warmer in winter, and moister throughout the year. The two Manitou Islands, in particular, are filled with unusually large plants, like the Grove of the Giants, a forest of massive 100-foot white cedars on South Manitou.

But it’s one thing to hear about all the diverse plants and animals that survive and thrive in the unique terrain of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and another thing entirely to experience it first-hand. Coming around a bend in the trail to see a mother deer standing in the forest with her fawns, or gazing down the 400-foot face of the dunes as a school of enormous lake trout glides through the blue water like a fleet of small submarines, is a truly unforgettable experience.

For more information about the wildlife of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, contact the park headquarters at www.nps.gov/slbe/.

Tags: Sleeping Bear Dunes, Wildlife
Posted in Hiking, Parks, Uncategorized, Wildlife | No Comments »

The Grand Traverse Commons: An “Asylum” of Peace & Quiet

Monday, July 12th, 2010

A stroll across the front lawn at the Grand Traverse Commons

By MIKE NORTON

Whew! Another National Cherry Festival has passed into history. It was a great time, but what an intense week of activity! It’ll be good to have a few days to catch our collective breath.

One of the best places I know to do a little relaxing in is the Grand Traverse Commons, our own little “Central Park” on the west end of town. And that’s appropriate, since the Commons was designed to be restful and relaxing - after all, it used to be our mental asylum! I put some photos of the Commons up on our Facebook page a couple of weeks ago, and it sparked a lot of interest, so I thought I’d add a little bit more here.

Once known as the Northern Michigan Asylum, and later as the Traverse City State Hospital, this sprawling expanse of forest, meadows and cream-colored Victorian buildings is being transformed into an entire town of shops, restaurants, galleries, apartments and condominiums. And its 500-acre campus serves as a vast urban park where the spires of the old hospital buildings soar like the turrets of romantic castles above its miles of walking paths and trails.

Hikers on one of the many Grand Traverse Commons trails.

Few historic sites are so well-suited to such a second life. The buildings of the former asylum were purposely designed to be brighter and more spacious than other 19th century structures - thanks to a Victorian visionary named James Kirkbride, who believed that the sufferings of the mentally ill could be eased by fresh air, hard work, abundant natural lighting and beautifully landscaped surroundings. The Traverse City facility, established in 1885, became a huge park, filled with Victorian-Italianate buildings of golden brick and planted with exotic trees collected from around the world.

It was also a small, self-sufficient city in its own right, with its own farms, gardens, fire department and power plant. At one point it boasted 3,500 residents — which was more than Traverse City’s population at the time. When the place was closed in 1989, local residents quickly banded together to preserve the expansive forested grounds and stately castle-like buildings. It was a daunting task. Many of the crumbling structures were in scary condition — in fact, several photographs of them taken by Traverse City artist Heidi Johnson ended up as props in the 2003 horror film “Gothika” — and for several years no one knew exactly what to do with the place.

That changed in 2000 when developer Ray Minervini approached the community with a plan to turn the sprawling complex into a “walkable, mixed-use village” that would include a broad variety of residential and commercial opportunities - retail stores, professional offices, restaurants, apartments and condominiums. After two years of negotiations, work on the project finally began in 2002. It’s been a slow process and it’s far from over, but the developers have had little difficulty finding tenants who are willing to reserve space in the restored buildings — sometimes years in advance.

One of the first tenants was Trattoria Stella, a “neighborhood bistro” started by Paul and Amanda Danielson that’s become Traverse City’s signature fine dining restaurant. If you were trying to come up with the perfect spot for a romantic dinner, the cellar of an abandoned asylum might not be your first choice — but romantic is precisely the word for Trattoria Stella. With its vaulted ceilings, deep-set windows and ancient brick walls whose gold patina glows in the flickering candlelight, it seems to be a place out of space and time. As you linger over your aperitif, it’s easy to imagine yourself in some Tuscan monastery or a castle in Calabria.

Nearby is the Mercato, a meandering subterranean shopping arcade packed with tiny shops, art galleries and boutiques. The upper floors, with their tall windows and high ceilings, are home to beauty salons and health clubs, posh office suites and luxury apartments. Even the outbuildings have been put to use - the former laundry is home to a coffee roaster and an “urban winery,” there’s a pastry shop and restaurant in the old potato-peeling shed, and a brick-oven bakery now operates out of the old fire station. And plans are in the works for an 84-room boutique hotel that will make use of two castle-like brick “cottages” and a connecting dining hall.

Lunch in the Mercato

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Meanwhile, the buildings and grounds are being used for a wide variety of events and celebrations - in summer there’s a Farmer’s Market on the lawns and this year there are several big “foodie” events:” the Aug. 14 Mario Batali food celebration, the Aug. 21 Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, and the Aug. 27-28 Traverse City Microbrewery & Music Festival. There’s a spring dairy festival at the site of the gigantic barns where the asylum’s horses and cattle were once stabled, and a March snowshoe stroll where participants follow a candlelit trail through the forest at night. And when school is in session, children from the surrounding communities come on field trips in search of rare trees, wildflowers and migrating songbirds.

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The Commons is still very much a work in progress, and the job of reclaiming the once-empty buildings will take at least another decade. But Minervini is confident that the project has more than enough momentum to carry itself to completion.

“It’s been wonderful to see these places come alive again, one by one,” he says.

The red-tipped spires of Building 50 at the Commons

Grand Traverse Commons: Fun Facts

World Champion Cow
Of the thousands of inhabitants of the former Traverse City Asylum, only one is known to history - and she wasn’t even insane. She was Traverse Colantha Walker, a grand champion milk cow who belonged to the hospital’s extensive herd. When she died in 1932, staff and patients held a banquet in her honor and erected a large granite tombstone over her grave.

Munson Arboretum
James Decker Munson, who served as director of the asylum from 1885 to 1924, was an inveterate collector of rare trees and shrubs, and regularly brought back specimens from his travels to plant on the grounds. Dozens of them still survive, and are now over a century old, including a grove of rare copper beeches and mature specimens of sweetgum, English oak and tulip tree that are almost unknown at this latitude.

The Crimson Spires
The red-tipped spires that give the old asylum buildings their distinctly feudal appearance are not simply for decoration. They’re the vestiges of an ingenious 19th century air circulation system that used natural convection to draw cool air up into hollow spaces between the hospital’s two-foot-thick walls of the hospital; stale, hot air was expelled through the rooftop spires.

Tags: Grand Traverse Commons, Traverse City
Posted in Food & Drink, Hiking, History, Parks, Traverse City, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Get Ready — July 3-10 is Cherry Festival Time!

Monday, June 28th, 2010

The Blue Angels Roar above West Bay at the 2008 Festival

By MIKE NORTON

I arrived at work today to find my usual view of West Grand Traverse Bay blocked by a horde of moving vans, scads of big white tents and a crowd of bustling red-shirted volunteers - and I couldn’t be happier. It’s the first sign that Traverse City is getting ready for another National Cherry Festival - a process that has to start many days before the opening of the festival itself.

Traverse City is proud to be America’s Cherry Capital, and we celebrate that heritage every year during the first week of July with an eight-day party: the National Cherry Festival. Our favorite festival, which runs July 3-10 this year, features over 150 family activities: air shows, fireworks, parades (including the nation’s largest all-children parade) games, races, midway rides, demonstrations, nightly outdoor concerts — and lots of chances to taste delicious cherry products.

Now in its 84th year, the Cherry Festival is Traverse City’s signature event, drawing as many as 500,000 attendees from around the country. Everything is located conveniently within walking distance, and since almost all the events are free, it offers more than a week of affordable family fun. Locals like to grouse about the Festival because it slows traffic down on the Grandview Parkway (although anybody who’s lived here more than a year already knows how to get around it) and because, well, because some people can complain about almost anything.

Personally, I love the Festival. In this world of high-priced, glitzy and increasingly snooty activities, it has worked hard to be a solid, family-centered event that hasn’t lost touch with ordinary people. Unlike a lot of the happenings I’ve been invited to in the last year or two, it’s the kind of event where you can still enjoy yourself for a whole week without having to go into debt, and where you’re unlikely to meet anybody who looks down their nose at you or the things you consider important.

This year’s festival will kick off with a highly anticipated and patriotic 4th of July weekend return visit by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, along with civilian acts Christine “CC” Gerner and Billy Werth. The Festival Air Show will take to the sky on Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4 over West Grand Traverse Bay. On Monday, for the second year in a row, the festival will hold a Heroes’ Day where festival-goers who have served in the Armed Forces, as well as firefighters, first responders, public safety and homeland security personnel, will be recognized with Festival Hero Medallions that make them eligible for special extras throughout the Festival grounds and the downtown shopping district.

The Cherry Royale Parade is Always a Festival Highlight

The Cherry Royale Parade is Always a Festival Favorite

Other highlights include two parades (the Junior Royale parade Thursday evening and the Cherry Royale Parade on Saturday morning) two fireworks displays (one on July 4, the other on July 10) nightly concerts on the shore of West Grand Traverse Bay, the Friday night Cherryland Band Classic where high school marching bands from around the Midwest compete with each other, and the Ultimate Air Dogs competition where high-flying pooches jump for distance into a huge tank of water.

Festival organizers also booked several top musical acts for the bay side stage, including Grammy-winning Latin band Los Lonely Boys, swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and country singer and songwriter Randy Houser. Favorites like 1964 The Tribute, a Beatles tribute band, and THINK Floyd USA, a Pink Floyd tribute band, also are on the schedule. The main stage musical offerings are rounded out by The Gregg Rolie Band, rhythm and blues musician Tommy Castro and Northwestern Michigan College’s Community Band.

New at this year’s festival will be two additional musical stages, one in the beer tent and the other at the Open Space’s food market. For a full schedule of events, go to www.cherryfestival.org

Tags: Grand Traverse, National Cherry Festival, Traverse City
Posted in Festivals, Summer, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Suddenly, it’s Summer! A Beachcomber’s Guide to Traverse City

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Saturday Afternoon at Suttons Bay

By MIKE NORTON

Wow! What an amazing Memorial Day weekend. For a while on Saturday, I thought we’d skipped June entirely and gone straight to July. I’ve never seen so many people at the beach and in the water this early in the year. (The bay was so warm that I even dove into it a few times myself - and I usually wait until Cherry Festival week!)
But the whole experience got me thinking about the many beaches in and around Traverse City. Everybody has his or her own favorite, of course - but the sheer number of them can make the process of choosing the correct beach a bit of a headache.

The late Charles Kuralt may have said it best. Bewildered by all the possible activities and attractions a visitor to Traverse City might face, the famed host of On the Road once confessed that he found it hard to pick just one or two things to do. Play golf? Pick fruit? Taste wine? Take in a concert? In the end, he concluded:

“Maybe we’ll just sit on a beach and think about this. Yes - but which beach to sit on? East Bay Beach, West End Beach, Northport Beach, Lighthouse Park, Sleeping Bear Dunes? Glorious place. Too many choices.”

It’s always been that way, of course. With 181 miles of shoreline on Grand Traverse Bay and Lake Michigan and 149 inland lakes, the Traverse City area is blessed with dozens of gorgeous beaches, from the endless golden sands of Sleeping Bear to the rock-strewn shoals of the Old Mission Peninsula. Even if we’re just talking about the public beaches in Traverse City itself, the choices can still be daunting (After all, there are two bays to choose from — urban West Bay with its parks and paths, and resort-oriented East Bay with its hotels and cottages - and each has lots of beaches to choose from.

So which beach is the best? It all depends on what you want to do and when you want to do it. Swimming or tanning? Morning, afternoon or evening? Looking for a family beach with a playground, bathhouse, picnic tables and a lifeguard, a sociable beach where everybody seems to be showing off the latest swimwear styles, or a long lonely stretch of sand where you can walk for an hour without seeing another person? Traverse City has all of those, and more. Here are a few of my personal favorites:

Best All-round Convenient Beach: Clinch Park
It’s hard to beat a beach that has over 1500 feet of sandy shore with picnic tables, lifeguards, restrooms and a miniature steam train. Prized for its proximity to downtown shops, restaurants and parking, Clinch Park is the most popular of Traverse City’s many beaches. And although it can get particularly crowded on hot midsummer afternoons, all you have to do is wander down the shore a little ways to find a quiet spot closer to the mouth of the Boardman River.

Best Sunset Beach: Empire Village Park
It’s hard to find a place anywhere on the Lake Michigan shore of the Leelanau Peninsula where the sunsets aren’t spectacular, but this generous beach at the end of Niagara Street has lots of advantages. It’s surrounded by the majestic Empire Bluffs, and close to food and other beach necessities. Best of all, when the sun goes down you can find your way back to Traverse City without getting lost.

Best Morning Beach: Haserot Beach
Tucked away in the tiny village of Old Mission, Haserot Beach is still pretty much a neighborhood hangout on weekdays, but on weekends it can get pretty crowded - especially for a beach that’s 20 miles from town! The attraction? A south-facing beach in a sheltered, crescent-shaped harbor that starts getting sunshine as soon as dawn breaks over the horizon.

Best Family Beach for Afternoons and Evenings: Bryant Park
This most easterly of Traverse City’s West Bay beaches, boasts an elaborate playground, lifeguards, restrooms and lots of grills and picnic tables shaded by tall pines, Bryant Park offers relief from the afternoon sun and a fine swimming beach where children can be easily supervised. It’s also, hands down, the best place in town to sit on the beach and watch the sun go down.

Best Beach for a Long Uninterrupted Stroll: Good Harbor Bay
The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is crammed with wonderful, lonely beaches where you can walk for miles without seeing another person, but many of these isolated spots are hard to reach by car. An exception is Good Harbor Bay, where there are lots of places to park along the road and walk out to the beach. Once you’ve arrived, you can walk as far as you like, and the view is excellent.

Best Beach with a Built-in Fun Ride: Lake Township Beach
At the mouth of the Platte River near Honor, this beach opens onto Platte Bay and is beautiful in its own right. But an added benefit is the river, which rushes down through the sand dunes on its way to the lake. Kids of all ages enjoy floating on the stream and letting the current carry them out to the lake, then getting out and doing it all over again. There’s a nice picnic ground with modern restrooms, too.

Most Underpublicized Beach: Elk Rapids
The village of Elk Rapids has two fine beaches on East Grand Traverse Bay. One is near the town’s quaint River Street shopping district, with a great playground and fine views of the Old Mission peninsula across the water. The other is a 13-acre county park on South Bayshore Drive with wooded nature trails, a bathhouse, playground, picnic area, tennis and basketball courts and a fine strolling beach along the bay.

Best Beach for Rockhounds: Peterson Park
When you visit this isolated park near the tip of the Leelanau peninsula, you begin at the top of a high bluff with splendid views of Lake Michigan and descend a steep set of stairs to reach the water. But bring shoes or sandals! This beach isn’t made of sand, gravel or pebbles - it’s composed entirely of rocks. Fist-sized, grapefruit-sized, watermelon-sized, in a bewildering and fascinating range of types and colors, all left by ancient glaciers and rolled to clean smoothness by the endless action of the waves.

Best Beach for Amateur Archeologists: West End Beach
A small, quiet beach at the end of Division Street on West Bay, with restrooms and a small parking lot, this can be a fine place for morning sunbathing and swimming, and is popular among families with small children. But its most unique feature is that much of Traverse City’s frontier waterfront was located just west of the beach — you can still see the jagged stumps of old wharves and piers out in the water, which frequently washes up bits of sand-frosted glass and smoothed bits of planks from long-ago sawmills.

Best Beach for Contemplating the Human Form: Volleyball Beach
Just west of Clinch Park and the Open Space, Traverse City’s newest beach came into being only a few years ago when several old buildings were removed from the waterfront. It takes its name from the beach volleyball courts located here (which hosted the 2005 World Cup beach volleyball tournament, in case you were interested) and is especially popular with the young, lean and well-tanned, even those who don’t play volleyball.

Best Beach for Small Children: East Bay Park
This park at the city’s eastern edge is located in a quiet residential neighborhood that’s sheltered by lots of majestic pines. Here there are extensive picnic areas, restrooms, a nice play area, a lifeguard station and a shallow sloping beach. But the best advantage is that there isn’t very much automobile traffic nearby, and the water is extremely shallow for quite a long way.

Best East Bay Beach: Traverse City State Park
At the foot of Three Mile Road, this park offers 700 feet of splendid sandy beach near the mouth of Mitchell Creek. Since it’s a state park, visitors must purchase a vehicle permit - but there’s also a roomy bathhouse and changing room and a well-maintained picnic area. Although this is the last public beach at the southern edge of East Bay, no one minds if you wander farther along what was once billed as Traverse City’s “Sugar Sand Miracle Mile.” Now home to several handsome upscale resorts and condo developments, it remains a wonderful place for an early-morning run or an evening stroll.

Tags: Beaches, Old Mission Peninsula, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Traverse City
Posted in Summer, Traverse City, Uncategorized, Water | 1 Comment »

Northport Firefighters Present “Cars in the Park” on May 29

Monday, May 24th, 2010

There's just no way this car show isn't cool. Why didn't I know?

By MIKE NORTON
When you’re in the tourism business, you like to think you’re on top of everything that’s going on in your area. So it’s a truly humbling experience to discover that you’ve missed an event of surpassing coolness - especially one that’s been taking place for 13 years. I honestly don’t know how I could have missed the Northport/Omena Firefighters Association’s annual Cars in the Park show up in Northport, because it epitomizes everything I love in a small-town fun event: it’s friendly, quirky and cheap.
Every spring, rain or shine, the firefighters up at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula put on this nifty car show in Northport’s Haserot Park. (This year it’ll be Saturday, May 29.) The show features all kinds of vehicles: classic cars, vintage cars, muscle cars, trucks and more. ). There’s food available — brats, hot dogs, pop, chips and that sort of thing - but the main attraction is the cars themselves. The 2009 show saw 92 entries, which nearly filled the park down by the Northport marina, and they’re hoping for even more this year.

Best of all, if you’re just somebody who likes to check out cool cars, there’s absolutely no admission charge. The firefighters make their money charging car owners for the privilege of showing their pet autos; it costs $12 to enter a car if you plan ahead, or $15 if you just drive it to the park on the day of the show. And they award trophies for all kinds of things (best paint job, longest drive, etc.)
One of the more exotic customs at this show is the destruction of the so-called “blow-up car.” The organizers choose a car (presumably a junker and not some collector’s pampered baby) drain all the oil out of the engine, start it up, and let it run. Then everybody stands around and bets on when the engine finally seizes up and stops running - sort of like a football pool. After the car is completely dead, the firefighters use the body as a demonstrator for the Jaws of Life, the hydraulic device they use to retrieve people trapped in crashed vehicles. By the time they’re done, I imagine the car looks like a very large empty tuna can.
The night before the show, there’s another nifty event: a “Sunset Cruise” through the beautiful orchard country of northern Leelanau County, where all those well-tended cars meet up in front of the village fire hall at 9 p.m. and head off into the twilight.
Interested in more information? They have a website: www.carsinthepark.webs.com. Or you can call 231-386-5234.

Tags: Northport
Posted in Spring, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

A-mazing times in the Fall Cornfields this Year!

More Festivals…. and a Quiet Walk Along the River

Whew! Cooler Weather — Just in Time for the TC Wine & Art Festival and the Third Coast Bicycle Festival!

Next Saturday: Lunch with Carter, Dinner With Mario

The Traverse City Film Festival Starts this Week!

Few Bears — but Lots of Other Wildlife at Sleeping Bear Dunes

The Grand Traverse Commons: An “Asylum” of Peace & Quiet

Get Ready — July 3-10 is Cherry Festival Time!

Suddenly, it’s Summer! A Beachcomber’s Guide to Traverse City

Northport Firefighters Present “Cars in the Park” on May 29

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