Adventures around Traverse City
After dropping Andrea off at the Airport for her 5:50 AM flight, I stopped for an early-morning walk on Front Street. It is quite rare that I see no one else on the street, but the early hour and the rain gave me an opportunity to have the whole street to myself.
This is a limited-time activity, so act now! It’s April, so when the population of Traverse City increases five-fold in two-months time, even at 5:30 in the morning, there will be someone wandering on Front Street.
It’s best to sing that line to the tune of “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy.
Yes, the bees are back in Leelanau County, back from Florida or whatever warm weather land they had wintered at. These particular bees are at an orchard just north of Shady Lane.
The bee people were kind enough to put signs about the bees just before reaching the area. I made sure to keep my mouth closed as I zoomed through the area. A stung tongue sounds like quite a pain.
It is time to say goodbye to something that brought much happiness to my life:
With the road work having started on Front Street between Grandview Parkway and Garfield, we will lose a good friend, the always-on right turn light where Front Street meets Grandview Parkway. Instead of being able to zip through that intersection on my way home to the West Bay area, now we are condemned to have to stop, wasting time.
If you look at this at the lens of our society, it makes sense. We govern to the least common denominator of human being, especially when it comes to driving. Someone in a cube in Lansing has decided that people in Traverse City need to stop there – we couldn’t possibly handle taking a turn at the outrageous speed of 35 MPH.
Another small joy in life is dead thanks to MDOT.
It was quite a weekend up here in Traverse City. We got about 17 inches of snow where I live on the Leelanau Peninsula over the weekend, causing me to have one of those rare days where I don’t leave the house.
That was Saturday. On Sunday, it was back out on the trails. After a sermon at Bayview Church, I headed over to Hickory Meadows for a hike in the snow. There were a surprising number of people out. The trails were by no means full, but the skiers were happy to be on the groomed trails. Me – I stuck to the woods.
I hope you all had a happy New Year’s Eve and Day. At the Stoecker house, we started our year with bubbly wine from Bel Lago and many, many snacks along with sushi from Fuji.
Before the bowl games of January 1st, I needed to get out and hike, and Alligator Hill in Glen Arbor won out as my first hike of the year. When I arrived, I was happy to see no footprints in the snow, so I was the first to climb these hills for 2024. I didn’t win a prize or anything, but I could count on having the place to myself.
When I entered the parking lot, I was greeted by these brick and concrete structures. These are kilns built in the 1950s by Pierce Stocking, the man the Sleeping Bear dunes drive is named after. Pierce was a lumberman and there was quite a bit of waste wood left over, and these kilns were used to produce charcoal.
The trail soon gave me a choice, left or right. I chose right because in that direction led the advanced trail, a section of the trail I hadn’t yet hiked. I can’t claim it is any more hillier than the other trails – Alligator Hill has a lot of vertical changes – but it was stepper than most of the trail system. And it escaped most the damage of storm of eight years ago, so you will see many more tall trees.
Along the way, I saw numerous animal tracks. Animal footprints are not a specialty of mine, but my best guess was a coyote. I suppose it could have been a lone dog, but I went with the coyote theory because there were no people tracks beside it.
Much of the trail still suffers from the damage of the August 2nd, 2015 windstorm that torn through the Glen Arbor area, downing many trees and damaging buildings. It will be decades before the damage is finally erased, hidden by new growth.
My first hike done, I spent the day rooting for teams that lost in the bowl games. Nothing new there. That didn’t mar the great hiking I had done earlier. And as I only hiked four miles of the 9-mile trail system, I have many more miles to look forward to.
Traverse City has gotten its very own Circle K! Yes, at the corner of South Airport and Cass, the legendary convenience has arrived, though it is still being rebranded from a Holiday station:
Perhaps “legendary” is too strong a word. Perhaps “excellent” is a better one. Circle K will always remind me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the place where their adventure through time starts.
Unfortunately, that particular Circle K (in Tempe, AZ) closed last year. We perhaps if there is ever a “Bill and Ted’s Part 4” movie, they’ll film it here.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
This the Speedway at the corner of Grandview Road and M-22. That was quite a shot, getting around the pole and hitting the pump hard enough to take it off the cement. There were no explosions or billowing clouds of smoke, so evidently the safety measures on the gas pumps work.
Perhaps it was someone that finally got fed up with the Speedy Rewards card scanner not working. I’ve been there, too.
Yes, I made up that word, but it works.
This is a friendly reminder to not miss the fantastic Halloween displays on Sixth Street. My favorite is on the corner of Maple Street.
This is going to be a familiar site along Grandview in the coming months:
For now, they are tearing up part of the median between Division and M-72. I believe they are going to have a turn lane onto Elmwood, but I could be wrong. I don’t know that this will help with anything, but some MDOT employee in a cube in Lansing decided this is what we needed three hours away, so this is what we get.
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