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Gourmet Michigan products in unique gift baskets. Great tasting jams, dried cherries, Sanders chocolates, caramel corn, Michigan fudge, and much more.
The "Joe's Trip" Tractor Group recently took the S.S. Badger Lake Michigan car ferry from Wisconsin to the West Michigan Old Engine Club in Scottville, Michigan. What could be better than old tractors and the S.S. Badger car ferry? My son would have loved to have been on this trip across the lake.
This weekend, August 14-15, you can visit any National Park across the country without paying the entrance fees. Why not make plans to visit one of Michigan's beautiful National Parks? Other than a few of the sites requesting donations/fees in the Keweenaw National Historic Park, Isle Royale National Park and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore are the only National Parks in Michigan that charge fees throughout the season.
Just a bit of trivia - did you know that Porcupine Mountains State Park qualified to be a National Park, but it was designated as a State Park in 1945 effectively protecting the virgin timber before any National Park protection would have taken effect.
Visit one of these great Michigan National Parks -
Vote in the current poll for your favorite National Park in Michigan -
[poll id="44"]
Author John Smolens is the recipient of the 2010 Michigan Author award. Smolens' latest fiction novel, The Anarchist, is a historical novel that depicts the William McKinley's assassination. The Michigan Author award is -
Sponsored jointly by the Michigan Center for the Book (a program of the Library of Michigan), Sleeping Bear Press and the Michigan Library Association, this annual award honors a Michigan writer for his or her contributions to literature based on an outstanding published body of work.
Smolens is a Marquette resident and is currently a professor of English at Northern Michigan University. His previous novels, Cold: A Novel and Fire Point were set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
I have made a promise to myself to make more of an effort to thoroughly explore Traverse City. I just love this town. It's funny, but I have never spent much time in Traverse City. It always seems like I'm just passing through on my way to a more northern destination.
I spent a bit more time there last week, but I left wishing I could have stayed longer. Plans are already underway for a lengthier stay next summer.
If most of your experience with Traverse City is during the National Cherry Festival - you're missing out. Don't get me wrong - the National Cherry Festival is a great event. But with all of the special events and activities that surround the festival I think the charm of Traverse City might get lost in the shuffle and that is a shame.
Anyone that has at least driven through Traverse City knows just how beautiful it is. What they don't know (well, at least what I didn't know) is just how friendly the people are.
I constantly met people holding doors for my family and I, smiling, and saying hello in a cheerful way. For a town of its size, Traverse City residents sure seem to have a genuine small-town charm about them.
We ate lunch at one of my favorite northern Michigan restaurants, Scalawags Whitefish & Chips. I remember when you had to go all the way to Mackinaw City to get your fix for delicious deep-fried Great Lakes whitefish. The Traverse City location is excellent and the whitefish I had was probably the best I have had at any of their locations.
Hopes of my kids not caring for it (so I could eat theirs) quickly faded and I was left with offerings of their remaining french fries. Oh well :).
You can't take a "quick" walk around downtown Traverse City. There is just too much to see and too many neat shops. We didn't have any trouble parking and I quickly became jealous of the large number of people who were biking all over town on the numerous biking trails.
Traverse City is definitely biking friendly. The other Michigan town that quickly came to my mind when looking at the biking paths was Marquette (currently tied with Traverse City as my favorite northern Michigan town).
Traverse City State Park is just a short (two mile) bike ride to downtown and is a pretty popular camping spot. I always say, "one of these days we'll camp there" and maybe "one of these days" will come soon.
Before we left town we just had to stop in for pie at Grand Traverse Pie Company. We came for the pie and ended up staying for lunch, too :). One of the super-friendly staff highly recommended the Cherry Peach Crumb pie saying, "if all they served in heaven was Cherry Peach Crumb pie, that would be all right." After eating quite a few slices I would have to agree with her.
While I was ordering our pie a gentleman was trying to find out where to get a specific flavor of Leelanau Coffee. He said he had tried to find it at one of the local grocery stores, but they didn't carry it. I told him that their store is over in Glen Arbor and it's just a nice little scenic drive along M-22 away from Traverse City. He didn't sound too interested (his loss - the drive to Glen Arbor is beautiful) so I told him he could easily order it online as well.
With a bellyful of pie and a large cup of coffee (Grand Traverse Pie Company house blend - very good!) in hand we sadly pointed the truck south and headed on home.
So, until next summer, goodbye, Traverse City, thanks for having us.
Watch the four new Pure Michigan TV spots below and then vote for your favorite in our new poll. These four commercials were released earlier this spring for the 2010 tourism season. I love them all - it's a tough decision to decide on a favorite.
[poll id="43"]
The strawberries, that is. At least here in southwest Michigan. All the local patches (including my strawberry patch that meanders around some of our raised beds) wrapped up the strawberry season over the weekend. The strawberries started early and left just as quickly as they arrived. We made the most of them and enjoyed fresh strawberries on cereal, pancakes, waffles and ice cream. I ate countless bowls of strawberry shortcake as well. In fact, with that in mind it is probably just as well that the season is over - at least as far as my waistline is concerned.
Here is what our local orchard, Corey Lake Orchards, had to say about the season -
Due to the early spring heat, everything is running about 10 days to 2 weeks early this year. It’s almost unheard of for strawberries to be over and to be in the middle of cherry season during the middle of June!
Sounds like we had better get our fill of cherries as quickly as possible - they might go just as fast as the strawberries.
Another great local market for asparagus, strawberries, and blueberries is Riverland Farm Market. They are supposed to have Michigan blueberries in starting this Friday, June 25th.