Leelanau Up North

Photo Courtesy Of The Leelanau Enterprise Some guys have it all …. Take Rick Wanroy of Leland, Michigan, for example. Rick is the proprietor of The Cove, a hugely popular restaurant on the Leland River. Rick lives and works in Leelanau County, a.k.a. the Land of Delight, one of the most beautiful places in America. Rick owns a sweet, cherry red Amphicar for cruising the roads and waterways of Leelanau in style. Did I mention the beauty queen riding in the back seat of Rick's Amphicar? Dining at The Cove, you'll have a ringside seat by a mini Niagara Falls, as the turquoise water cascades over the Leland dam on its short trip to Lake Michigan.  A truly picturesque  setting for a great meal. And if you spend any time in Leland's historic Fishtown District, you're bound to see Rick's famous car / boat - motoring around with four wheels, ... if by land, and two propellers, ... if by sea. Rick's Amphicar is one of only 3,878 produced in German...

Leelanau Waterscape … by Kristina Lishawa Photograpy Summer in Leelanau is a perfect time to contemplate how utterly insignificant we are in the universe, or ... If your glass is half full, …  How miraculously significant it is that we even exist in the cosmos. Why Summer?  Because, while relaxing on the beach, one may casually pick up a handful of golden sand containing about 10,000 grains.  One may then recall the report of the prestigious International Astronomical Union in 2003: There are 10 times more stars in the observable sky than grains of sand in all the world's beaches, dunes and deserts! With so many billions upon billions of stars and their planets surrounding us, perhaps millions of them with intelligent life, it's easy to feel totally inconsequential - like a tiny droplet in the vast sea of existence. But, ... what if it turns out, … there really is no place like home? What if our sapphire blue rock is like no other in creation? Wha...

Standing outside the M22 store in Glen Arbor …. Sue was approached by a young man who had just exited the shop - clutching a bag full of goodies emblazoned with the now famous logo. "Excuse me, he said rather sheepishly.  I'm not from around here.  What exactly is M22?" Sue smiled and pointed to the county road sign just above their heads.  "It's the road you're on." Ah, ... a road, ... yes.  But not just any road. M22 is a 116 mile scenic corridor outlining the Leelanau peninsula from Manistee to Traverse City.  It is perhaps Michigan's most beautiful highway in what many consider America's most beautiful place. To the west, a vast fresh water sea, bordered by towering dunes, stretches blue to the horizon.  To the east, sparkling inland lakes amidst forested hills are accented by crimson orchards and vineyards. It's no wonder that the M22 road sign has come to identify so much more than just a two lane black top. Thank...

Shoreline  At  Empire  Beach Rocks .... Seriously, is there anything they can't do?  I think not. Use them for door stops, jewelry, weapons, landscape accents, weights, handsome things to behold, walls, Christmas presents for the naughty, and so much more. Rockhounding season is now underway, and Leelanau is a treasure trove of specimens - especially along the Lakeshore. Unique to the Land of Delight is the Petoskey stone, fossilized coral from an ancient shallow sea.  And the translucent Leland blue stone, actually a byproduct from the smelting of iron ore in the late 1800's. Interestingly, many Leelanau rocks hail from Canada, eh?  Such as jasper, granite, limestone, basalt, feldspar and quartz.  The great Wisconsin glacier, which created Lake Michigan, flowed south from Canada for thousands of years, carrying with it massive amounts of rock.  When the glacier melted back, about 10,000 years ago, it deposited the stone i...

Photo Courtesy Of Don Minard Photography - Traverse City, Michigan This time of year, especially, the little denizens of the woods and water come out in force. I mean insects. In addition to the usual varieties, Leelanau is home to some pretty unique species: Like the Spotted Cucumber Beetle, the Isabella Tiger Moth, and the Green Stink Bug. Sadly, in my younger days, I would swat or stomp these critters without hesitation - if they were so bold as to venture into "my" territory. Now, having mellowed and matured, I've taken to gently scooping up the little trespassers and ushering them out the door. I'll tell you why. If the Author of Nature, in Her infinite wisdom, has taken the time, perhaps millions of years, to carefully design and nurture these creatures, ... With their tiny, exquisitely crafted brains, musculature, circulatory systems, and more, … Who am I to destroy this divine handiwork? And then there's the little matter of ka...

Empire Beach - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Imagine strolling along Empire Beach at dusk, the last golden rays of a summer day shimmering on the lake. The cool water caresses your feet.  A lone gull circles high above the blue green forest. The evening is serene, and all is right in the world. Then, ... Y our eyes are drawn to an unbelievable and terrifying sight - the silhouette of a man hanging by his neck from a tree on the bluff, his body gently swaying in the breeze. A true account of this hanging was reported in the Leelanau Enterprise a few years ago. Ever since, I've tried to imagine what it would be like to come upon a scene of such overwhelming incongruity ... B etween the beauty and contentment of one moment, ... and the ugliness and anguish of the next. How could this be … in the Land of Delight? It could not be. Evil could not prevail in Leelanau, ... not on this enchanted evening. As if by miracle, a smartphone signal alerted the...

Most of us would agree that the sunset over Lake Michigan, pictured above, is … beautiful. Not unlike many such scenes in Leelanau, the Land of Delight. But I wonder …. This sense we have that something is beautiful - where does it come from? We don't learn to recognize beauty.  We just do.  We know it when we see it, as if by instinct. Somehow, I think, we are recalling a Supreme Beauty which occupies another realm. A realm, though unseen, that is no less a part of our being, ... and is perhaps our true home. In a word, we know beauty because we come from the source and Creator of all that is beautiful ... In Leelanau and beyond. See You Up North, Chris                     Visit A Leelanau Landmark:  The big one, Lake Michigan - 307 miles                     long, 118 miles wide, 1,640 miles of shoreline, 279 to 923 feet deep,     ...