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Archive for June, 2010

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 »

Ready for Pie? Looks Like a Very Early Cherry Harvest!

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Ripening Cherries in an Orchard on the Old Mission Peninsula

It’s been an amazing spring and summer so far - and part of the proof is already hanging on the millions of cherry trees that surround Traverse City: a huge harvest of ruby-red fruit that’s almost ready for harvesting - almost a month ahead of schedule. On the way home from church on Sunday I even saw several roadside stands up and running - selling cherries and strawberries.

Why the big fuss? Well, hey - this is the Cherry Capital of the World, after all.
With the possible exception of the Garden of Eden, it’s hard to think of a place more closely linked to a particular fruit than Traverse City is to cherries.

It’s not just the fact that this is the home of the National Cherry Festival, which is scheduled to start on July 3. Everything in Traverse City seems to have a cherry theme attached to it, from Cherry Capital Airport to the Cherryland Electric Cooperative. It’s a rare restaurant that doesn’t have at least one cherry-laced sauce, dessert or entrée, and a rare gathering where bowls of dried cherries aren’t on hand for snacking.

For over a century, those of us who live in the Grand Traverse Bay region have regarded these bright little fruits as a sort of botanical mascot. (Maybe it’s because they’re like us — tart and sweet and more resilient than they look.) But they’ve been part of the Traverse City experience ever since the first cherry tree was planted here in 1852 by the Rev. Peter Dougherty, a Presbyterian missionary to the local Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

No one expected Dougherty’s tree to survive so far north. Instead, it flourished - and it wasn’t long before arriving settlers began planting cherries of their own. What they discovered was that this region’s unique geography — gentle hillsides surrounded by lakes and bays of deep cool water - play a crucial role in moderating spring and winter temperatures.

Over the years, cherry orchards began to spread across the hills of the Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsulas, and today the Traverse City area produces over 75 percent of the world’s tart cherries. Back in 1923, local churches began a tradition known as the Blessing of the Blossoms, to pray for a successful crop. It’s still observed each May at the annual Blossom Days festival on the Old Mission Peninsula.

That simple blessing also gave birth to an even larger celebration: the National Cherry Festival. Each July, this week-long festival draws hundreds of thousands for parades, music, fireworks, games and competitions — including cherry pie-eating and pit-spitting contests. Festival organizers constantly work to come up with new and unusual uses for cherries, whether it’s in a familiar dessert, a basting sauce or even on pizza. Around here you’ll find them in everything from beer and wine to cherry vinaigrette salad dressing, bratwurst and beef patties.

There’s a reason for this ceaseless creativity: American tastes are changing, and people are eating less pie. If cherry farmers are to survive, they know they have to find new markets for their products. One of the earliest pioneers in this effort was Leelanau butcher Ray Pleva, who first mixed cherries with meat back in the 1980s. His Plevalean burgers are now served in school cafeterias in 18 states.

Today Pleva is heading in yet another direction, marketing skin care products that blend cherries with natural oils. In fact, the cherry industry is devoting a good deal of attention to health and beauty products, trading on the nutritional and anti-inflammatory qualities of cherries.

An awe-inspiring panoply of cherry items can be found in Glen Arbor, home to the original Cherry Republic store, which sells more than 150 cherry products from soda pop and wine to ice cream and salsa. The Republic also has an “embassy” in downtown Traverse City, and the doqwntown area has lots of stores that sell cherries in one form or another - whether it’s the preserves and sauces at American Spoon Foods or the chocolate-covered dried cherries at the Cherry Stop.)

Another wonderful way to encounter cherries is the way we locals do: at a local farm market or U-pick orchard. (Two good ones to try are Farmer White’s, just south of Elk Rapids on U.S. 31, or Gallagher’s on M-72 just west of town.) Standing in the orchard, with a glimpse of sparkling blue horizon visible between the heavy-laden branches, it’s clear that cherries chose a special place to make their own.

As for me, I’m already thinking about digging into the first pie of the season!

Tags: Cherries, National Cherry Festival, Traverse City
Posted in Festivals, Food & Drink, History | 1 Comment »

Exploring The Rivers of Traverse City

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Even as it runs through downtown Traverse City, the Boardman River is a haven for paddlers, anglers and wildlife.

By MIKE NORTON

With all due respect to the weatherman, I’m certainly glad I don’t rely on the local forecast to plan my leisure time. Everybody said the weekend was going to be awful, but once we got through that torrential thunderstorm on Friday, it was actually very nice. I even got in some beach time and a little kayaking on East Bay.

Which got me to thinking how much I seem to write about the Bay, to the neglect of our other lakes and streams and watery places. With that magnificent blue expanse at our doorstep, it’s sometimes easy for us Traverse City folks to forget that we also live in a region of beautiful little rivers.

But the Grand Traverse region boasts more than 100 creeks, streams and rivers. And because most of them are spring-fed and trickle over northern Michigan’s sandy, rocky soil, they’re remarkably clear and transparent.

Four scenic streams - the Boardman, the Platte, the Betsie and the aptly-named Crystal - can be found within a few minutes of downtown Traverse City. (Actually, the Boardman runs right through downtown Traverse City.) All four are surrounded by large tracts of uninhabited publicly-owned forest that add to the quiet serenity of a river trip or a fishing excursion.

With a few minor exceptions, these aren’t the kind of challenging whitewater streams that leave you gritting your teeth and gripping your paddle as though your life depended on it; they’re gentle rivers, often shallow and forgiving, that any beginner can enjoy. And there are a multitude of ways to enjoy them - in a canoe or kayak, or simply floating lazily downstream on an inflated inner tube.

The region’s largest and wildest river is the Boardman, which empties into the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay after winding through 25 miles of beautiful upland forest and a mile of urban hustle and bustle. Its charms are best sampled a few miles upstream, a stretch that’s been designated as one of Michigan’s Wild-Scenic Natural Rivers, where it flows past grassy meadows alive with kingfishers, blue herons, hawks, and bald eagles.
The Crystal River isn’t nearly as remote; it goes back and forth through the village of Glen Arbor, taking 11 miles to travel less than two miles of actual distance. A gentle stream that flows through overhanging cedars, it’s full of bass, sunfish and pike, and the riverbanks are home to deer, rabbits, muskrat, heron, beaver, fox and coyote. (Paddlers love to “shoot the tube” at a culvert that carries the river under a county road, and there are several good spots for swimming.)
The Platte is a river with a split personality; its nine-mile upper segment is fast and challenging, with narrow turns among logjams and other obstacles, but the lower four miles are a placid beginner-friendly stream that’s one of the region’s most popular tubing and paddling rivers. Here it flows through some of the loveliest country in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, where there’s almost always wildlife to be seen, ending at a beautiful sandy beach where paddlers and tubers reward themselves with a frolic in the Lake Michigan surf.

The Betsie, which travels nearly 50 miles from Interlochen to Frankfort, is usually paddled in small sections and is best suited for longer trips of a day or two. Probably the best stretch is a two-day 27-mile paddle through the Pere Marquette State Forest between the Grass Lake Wildlife Flooding and Dair’s Mill Landing that features abundant bird-watching opportunities, and obstacle-studded runs of faster water that will challenge but not overwhelm canoeists with basic skills.

All four of these rivers are teeming with fish. In fact, anglers consider the Boardman one of trout fishing’s great streams: renowned as a Blue Ribbon Trout stream where wily brook and brown trout still live and flourish. (In fact, it was here, almost a century ago, that the most effective and famous trout fly pattern in the entire world was born: the legendary Adams Fly.)

The Platte, too, is a Blue Ribbon trout stream, and two others - the Cedar River and the Jordan River - lie just a half-hour to the east, not far from Shanty Creek Resort. Nearly as close are several other famed trout steams: the Manistee, Au Sable and Pere Marquette. That’s one of several reasons why the Grand Traverse area has long been considered one of the best places in the continental U.S. for fly fishing.

So, when you get tired of those bright beaches and that Big Water, try a river sometime. It’s a great change of pace!

Tags: Add new tag, Boardman River, canoeing, Fishing, Grand Traverse, kayaking, Traverse City
Posted in Fishing, Summer, Traverse City, Water, Wildlife | 2 Comments »

Grand Traverse Bay — or is it Grand Traverse BAYS?

Monday, June 7th, 2010

A hot-air balloon floats over the twin arms of Grand Traverse Bay.

By MIKE NORTON

It’s a beautiful day, and I’m looking out my window at the lovely blue water of West Grand Traverse Bay. After all of the discussion we’ve had about Traverse City’s many beaches (see last post) I thought I ought to talk a bit about our wonderful bay — because if there’s a single feature that defines Traverse City, it’s the bay.

Its sheltered, incredibly clear waters attract boaters, fishermen and yachtsmen, its wide sandy beaches are a popular tourism asset, and it’s the ever-present backdrop to every beautiful scene. It even affects the local climate, creating the moderate weather that gives Traverse City its cool summers and temperate winters.

But anyone who’s spent any time around the Bay knows that its name is a misnomer. There are actually two bays, not one. Separated by the 17-mile length of the Old Mission Peninsula, these narrow freshwater fiords are known to geographers as the east and west “arms” of Grand Traverse Bay, but the locals (who know better) have always called them simply East Bay and West Bay.

It was the French who created the misunderstanding. One can hardly blame them, of course; they were in a hurry, and vacation was the last thing on their minds. They were hard-working 18th-century voyageurs, paddling their huge canoes up the Lake Michigan shoreline with a big cargo of beaver pelts and trade goods, and by the time they reached the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula, the last thing they wanted to see was more water.

“Zut, alors!” they exclaimed. “Quelle grand traverse!” (Which means something like, “Dude, it’s going to take ALL DAY to get across this thing!”) The name stuck, and for the last 300 years it’s been known as Grand Traverse Bay.

Although they may look very similar at first glance - the same stunning blend of deepwater blues and shallow greens, the same border of lush forested hills - each of Traverse City’s twin bays has its own distinct and special character. Urban West Bay is Traverse City’s watery “front yard,” a former industrial port that’s now an enchanting zone of parks, marinas and public beaches, while resort-oriented East Bay, almost entirely outside the city limits, is lined with hotels, resorts and private homes.

“Technically, there’s only one bay,” said John Nelson, the “baykeeper” at the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Center in Traverse City. “But there are some significant differences. East Bay has most of the coastal wetlands, and its east shore has more the feel of the open Lake Michigan shoreline, while West Bay has more vegetation and a rockier feel.”

The differences go back nearly 14,000 years, when the last great Ice Age still covered northern Michigan with a wall of ice over a mile high. As it slowly melted, this titanic bulldozer left a distinctive landscape behind: long, deep gouges filled with intensely clear blue water, separated by long, narrow ridges of rock, gravel and other debris.

The shore of East Bay was left relatively smooth, with only a single natural harbor near the tip of the Peninsula. The West Bay shoreline is much more ragged. It boasts four smaller bays (Suttons Bay, Bowers Harbor, Omena Bay, and Northport Bay), three islands (Power Island, Bassett Island and Bellows Island) and the mouth of a major river system. And while the sandy shoals of East Bay extend out as far as a mile from the beach, West Bay stays deep all the way to its southern edge.

It was only natural that the western bay would become the busier of the two, since it had several natural anchorages and the only potential site for a deepwater port. As early as 1847, when Horace Boardman started the first sawmill at the site of what would eventually become Traverse City, West Bay was the region’s industrial and transportation hub, its waters crowded with schooners, steamships and other vessels, its shores jammed with wharves, docks and warehouses.

East Bay’s fate was quite different. Except at its northern end, where the town of Elk Rapids experienced a brief heyday as an iron-smelting port, it became a rustic retreat where local residents could enjoy relief from the hustle and bustle of the city. Small cabins and cottages - and even a waterfront dance hall — sprang up along the southern shore. In the 1920s, a state park was established near Three Mile Road.

The process accelerated after the 1950s, when the East Bay beaches — christened the “Sugar Sand Miracle Mile” - were the first Traverse City attractions to be actively marketed to tourists. One by one, the small “mom and pop” cabins were replaced by the full-service motels and resorts that now line the water.

Traverse City’s West Bay waterfront was also changing, as the city began cleaning up the sites of old industrial docks and turning them into parklands. Today, the entire West Bay waterfront west of the Boardman River is a complex of public beaches, walking paths and parks, including Clinch Park, West End Beach, the Open Space Project and the waterfront section of the Traverse Area recreational Trail.

The two bays still retain many of their old differences. West Bay is still the “city bay” despite its spacious wide-open feel; because of its depth, it still attracts more sailboats and other deep-draft watercraft. The gentle beaches of East Bay have a more enclosed, private atmosphere, and are more congenial to shallow-water boats, paddlers and the air-mattress crowd.

In the end, of course, there’s really no need to choose. Since they’re separated by less than a mile of land, all the differences and similarities of Traverse City’s “twin bays” can be compared and enjoyed in a matter of minutes. Here are a few of their highlights:

West Bay features Clinch Park, over 1500 feet of sandy beach with picnic tables, lifeguards, restrooms, a marina, 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. To the east is Bryant Park, which offers relief from the afternoon sun and a fine swimming beach where children can be easily supervised, and at its western end, West Bay still shows some traces of its past as a frontier waterfront: the remains of 19th century wharves and piers, bits of sand-frosted glass and sand-smoothed from long-ago sawmills.

Much of the East Bay shoreline is in Traverse City’s hotel zone, although no one really minds if you wander along that mile-long stretch of fine golden sand. At the foot of Three Mile Road is one major exception: the Traverse City State Park, which offers 700 feet of splendid sandy beach near the mouth of Mitchell Creek with a roomy bathhouse and changing room and a well-maintained picnic area. Another East Bay surprise is some 15 miles north of the city, in the tiny village of Old Mission, where Haserot Beach features a lovely south-facing beach in a sheltered, crescent-shaped harbor.

So get out there and enjoy it!

Tags: Grand Traverse, Traverse City
Posted in Traverse City, Water | No Comments »

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 »

Archive for June, 2010

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

Ready for Pie? Looks Like a Very Early Cherry Harvest!

Exploring The Rivers of Traverse City

Grand Traverse Bay — or is it Grand Traverse BAYS?

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

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