After seeing Dale and Amy off on the camp bus
for Sae Jong Camp, Nancy and I drove up to Linda’s house in Sterling. She and Charley had a cookout for us. Our first tandem ride of the vacation was a
4-mile ride down the dirt road to the end and back. Charley started a campfire on the porch on the river. We had a beautiful evening and very few
insects.
Linda and Charley made us a great breakfast, and
Linda and Nancy did some planning for their September backpacking trip. Then we drove to Leland, going through
Grayling, Kalkaska, Traverse City, and Suttons Bay. Both Suttons Bay and Leland were wall-to-wall cars with all the
tourist traffic. We would observe later
that the Leelanau countryside is still relatively empty and enjoyable, because
all the tourists and summer residents are concentrated in only a few
densely-packed areas. We reserved the
ferry-trip and South Manitou camping for Wednesday, because the Tuesday ferry
was full. Then we checked into the
Whaleback Inn south of Leland, with a nice view of Lake Leelanau. We got the tandem out and bicycled to supper
(at the Bluebird Inn), then around the Lake Leelanau north arm, 17 miles total,
mostly flat on good roads. There were lots
of cottages and homes, but some fields and orchards also.
Tuesday,
August 6
Our main cycling trip was from Peterson Park,
north of Leland, to Leelanau Lighthouse and State Park, at the tip of the
peninsula, plus return. The first 3
miles were going over the 'backbone’ of the peninsula, so it was a little
hilly. Then the terrain leveled out
some and was a mixture of woods and orchards.
Worsley Landing Strip had a cool fieldstone building and observation
deck, plus picnic area with water. At
the Leelanau State Park, the Lighthouse was now a museum, with lots of
artifacts of the keepers’ lives from 1870’s to 1952. The beaches generally are very stony at the shore, but we didn’t
see any Petosky stones when we looked.
On the return trip, we bicycled >1 miles on gravel to get to Kehl
Lake Nature Conservancy Area. We walked
a 1-mile nature trail along the shore to an observation deck in the
wetland. We hadn’t been to a Nature
Conservancy area before, even though we have been long-time donors. The total day trip was 21.1 miles, pedaling
time was 1 hour, 53 minutes, average speed 11.3 m/h, and top speed down a steep
hill was 35.4 m/h. (Don’t you love
those cycling computers!)
After resting at Peterson Park, we drove to some
wineries for tasting and buying. We lunched
at Black Star on wine, jerky, raclette cheese, and pita bread. The wineries we visited were Raftshol, Black
Star, and Good Harbor. For supper, we
did a rib carry-out dinner, picnicking back at our Lodge after swimming in Lake
Leelenau. Our evening ride was half-way
around Little Traverse Lake, which was mostly all cottages and homes. Distance was 5 miles. We also tried to find the hiking trailhead
at Pyramid Point, but couldn’t locate it along the road. Back at the room, we did lots of packing for
the trip to South Manitou Island tomorrow.
We drove to the South Manitou Transit dock in
Leland after breakfast. The 120+
passengers are both campers and day visitors for the 5-hour layover on the
island. We talked to several
interesting passengers. A retired LCMS
pastor, Pastor Stogendahl, now lives on Lake Leelanau and knows both Larry
Matro at Immanual-Leland and Rob & Cheri Wurst at St. Paul’s-Good Harbor. (Both pastors are former members at
Hope.) He called Cheri Wurst from his
cell phone as we were nearing South Manitou and Nancy chatted with her.
The 90-minute ferry ride ended and we registered
and listened to Ranger Mark’s camper orientation. We picked site #14 at Bay Campground, at the edge of the woods by
the water. This Campground is the
closest to the dock, about a half mile.
We set up our tent and hung food away from the microbears (chipmunks),
then started hiking at 1:30pm.
Frankly, we way overdid the walking this day,
trying to see all the island highlights:
Bay, Cemetery, Farms, School, Lake Florence, ‘Morazan’ shipwreck, Giant
White Cedars, and perched sand dunes with ghost forests. Admittedly, the walking was pretty easy, on
hard-packed sandy roads or trails. The
only elevation was at the sand dunes on the western shoreline, but the views
from the top were impressive. After
seeing the highlights, we were left with a 1-1/2 hour hike back to camp, a
6-hour day in all, covering about 11 miles.
There were tiny toads all over the trail, also winged grasshoppers. The abandoned fields were a sea of
Queen-Anne’s lace, blackeyed susans, and a purple flower. Other fields were scrub trees, but more
grown than on my past visit 17 years ago.
The island is changing by stages to a beech-maple climax forest, except
for the small grove of ancient giant white cedars. We saw very few people on the trails and the campground was
<20% occupied. The ‘hazards’ were
fairly minor. Mosquitoes were sometimes
a problem in the heavier woods and there was a lot of poison ivy at the edges
of the forests.
We got back to the campsite after 7:30pm. We went for a short swim in the Bay. A few powerboats and sailboats were
overnighting there. We cooked our
freeze-dried supper and had some of our Leelanau wine (a pinot noir – gewurztraminer
blend). We then went to bed after
cleaning up. I got up later and saw an
impressive star-filled sky and gorgeous Milky Way.
We got up after 8am, had breakfast and broke
camp. We hiked with our gear back to
the Village. We didn’t do much walking
this day, because we had already seen most of the things we wanted to see, and
because of minor foot ailments.
Swimming was refreshing. Then we
worked to stay in the shade and out of the hot, bright sun until
departure. After the ferry ride, we
drove to Traverse City and picked out a nice motel on the East Arm, the
Traverse Bay Inn. The pool and hot tub
were just the ticket for sore muscles.
Our motel is right on TART, the Traverse Area
Recreational Trail, so we did some morning tandem cycling, 10-1/2 miles in 55
minutes. One part of the path had views
of the Bay, another part went behind the State Park, filled to the brim with
campers. We went for one more swim,
then started for home. A stop at the
Turtle Creek Casino was very brief and a big bust. We drove home using some secondary roads where possible (like
M-66 through Lake City), to enjoy the countryside. We called ahead to let Don and Dolores know we wanted to stay in
Algonac and visit with them. Travel
time from Traverse to Algonac was 6-1/2 hours.