Leelanau Up North

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...