What to do When the Weather Turns Ugly: A Great Exhibit at the Dennos Museum Center

Blooming Cherry Trees on the Old Mission Peninsula

By MIKE NORTON

The sun is shining, the Bay is a beautiful blue, and the flowers are blooming away just as though this past weekend never happened. But it DID happen, and it was ugly! Cold, cold winds, rain and even big gobs of snow that would have been very scenic in December, but were just WRONG in May.

And there I was, escorting a visiting outdoor writer who was in town to gather material about all the lovely things to do here in spring!

So what did we do? Well, we shopped in the Mercato at the Grand Traverse Commons. We tasted wine at Left Foot Charley and L. Mawby, and beer at Right Brain Brewery and Short’s. We sampled TC’s fabulous food at The Silver Swan and the Peninsula Grill. And when the rain slacked off, we hunted for wildflowers (pretty successfully) and morels (pretty unsuccessfully) at the Commons and the Grass River Natural Area. Oh, and we drove around looking at the blossoming cherry orchards, which don’t look nearly as wonderful on a cloudy day as they do today in the sunshine.

But the whole experience got me thinking about those rainy-day places I don’t usually check out.And one of the best is the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College. Since its opening in 1991, the Dennos has become one of northern Michigan’s most significant cultural centers. In addition to a collection that includes over 1,100 catalogued works of artworks from the Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic, it has hosted several major traveling exhibits, from works by studio glass artist Dale Chihuly to artifacts of ancient Egypt and gold from pre-Columbian Panama.

Another of those blockbuster exhibits is about to open next month at the Dennos. It’s “Birds of Paradise: Amazing Avian Evolution,” a traveling exhibition from the National Geographic Society, and it’ll make its national debut here June 16.

Interior of the Dennos Museum Center

In 2004, National Geographic photographer Tim Laman and Cornell University Lab of Ornithology scientist Edwin Scholes began a series of 15 targeted expeditions to document these bizarre birds. Eight years and 37 distinct geographic locations later, they completed the first comprehensive study of all 39 known species of birds-of-paradise.

The fascinating stories of ground breaking research and adventure paired with amazing footage and photography are the foundation of this highly interactive exhibition. “Birds of Paradise” is a story of daring expeditions, world culture, extreme evolution and conservation, as only National Geographic can present — with stunning imagery, compelling video, soundscapes, artifacts, and engaging educational activities for all ages.

The interactive exhibit — equal parts natural history, photography and science – provides an in-depth look through photographs, videos and sound recordings into the lives of all 39 species of these exotic New Guinea birds. From June 16 to Sept. 22, visitors will be able to follow the groundbreaking research of photographer Tim Laman and Cornell ornithologist Edwin Scholes into their fascinating behaviors.

“We were pleased to be invited by National Geographic, to be the opening venue for the national tour of this informative and fun exhibition,” says Gene Jenneman, the museum’s executive director. “We are excited to partner with National Geographic to bring this truly special exhibition to the Grand Traverse area and the State of Michigan.”

Red Bird of Paradise

Known for their spectacular plumage – especially the long and elaborate feathers on the tails, beaks, wings or heads of the males – birds-of-paradise live exclusively on New Guinea and a few surrounding islands, usually making their home in dense rainforest where they feed on fruits and insects. Scientists have long been interested in their strange mating rituals and dances.

As they enter the exhibit, visitors will be greeted with natural soundscapes, traditional wood carvings and a montage of the various bird-of-paradise species. They’ll experience the bizarre courtship dances that male birds perform to attract the females — through a unique “female’s eye view” video and with the help of interactive games like “Dance, Dance Evolution” that allow humans to learn the birds’ signature moves by dancing along with them.

Photos, videos, bird specimens and a kinetic sculpture of a riflebird (one bird-of-paradise species) also show the transformations that birds-of-paradise undergo to attract their mates and the various moves that make up their mating rituals. Visitors can also manipulate artificial tree branches to trigger video footage of different birds displayed on their perches, with commentary from Scholes.

Other facets of the exhibition highlight the importance of birds-of-paradise to New Guinea. Maps and diagrams of the birds’ ranges across the country explain how the country’s environment allowed the birds to adapt and evolve over time. Legends and folklore about the birds are shared from past generations of New Guinea natives..

Admission to the Museum Center during the run of this special exhibition will be $10 for adults and $5 for children.

The Dennos Museum Center is open daily 10 AM to 5 PM, Thursday’s until 8 PM and Sundays 1-5 PM. For more information on the Museum and its programs, go to www.dennosmuseum.org or call 231-995-1055.

The Cherry Blossoms Appear — and so does the National Cherry Festival

This is how it should look by Saturday!

By MIKE NORTON

I saw my first cherry blossom today – and by the end of the week I’m pretty sure there’ll be billions more.

Here in Traverse City, the annual blossoming of the cherries is a big deal. We have more than two million cherry trees ranged along the steep glacial ridges above Grand Traverse Bay, Lake Leelanau and Lake Michigan. When they’re in bloom, they’re like battalions of tidy white clouds set against the bright green grass, the fat gold dandelions and the cobalt blue waters.

It’s a beautiful sight, but it’s also a time for worry because cherry farming is a big part of what we do here. Cherries have been part of the Traverse City experience ever since the first cherry tree was planted here in 1852. Over the years, cherry orchards began to spread across the hills of the Old Mission and Leelanau Peninsulas, and today the Traverse City area produces over 75 percent of the world’s tart cherries.

Last year’s bloom came very early, thanks to an extremely warm spell in March. It was lovely, but it was followed by killing frosts that pretty much wiped out the 2012 crop. This year things seem to be proceeding normally; we had a very cool March and April, and spring is being very coy – the way she usually is in this part of the world.

The middle of May is when the cherry trees usually start blooming, and I’m thinking we’ll be right on schedule this year. So I felt relaxed enough this morning to wander over to the “sneak preview” press conference for the National Cherry Festival, which is now in its 87^th season.

This year’s Cherry Festival will kick off on Saturday, June 29 — a week earlier than usual – with a Festival Air Show, Bay Side entertainment, and lots of tasty cherry treats. The change was made so that Independence Day festivities could be included, since many residents and visitors have come to expect to celebrate the two observances at the same time. The eight-day festival offers over 130 events and attractions,  including free air shows, concerts, two parades, daily kids events, the Festival of Races, and (of course) Cherry Pie Eating and Pit Spitting competitions for every age.

Handing out flags at last year’s Cherry Festival Parade

I did manage to learn a few things while scarfing down some cherry brats and a massive wedge of crumb-crust cherry pie. For one thing, the opening day air shows over West Bay will include a first-ever night show, immediately following the evening outdoor concert by Styx (You probably already heard about that concert; Foreigner, Montgomery Gentry, Aaron Tippin and Jana Kramer will also be performing on the Bayside stage that week.)

I’m trying to imagine what an air show would look like in the dark, and I think it could be fairly amazing.

Lest we forget: Little ruby globes of love…

Other news: Mitch Albom will be the guest at the festival’s National Writer Series event, while TV handyman/heartthrob Carter Oosterhouse will be back to help supervise his new Carter’s Kids fitness run. But honestly, the centerpiece of the festival is still all the fun, mostly free games and activities and parades and shows that happen all week long and make this one of my favorite annual Traverse City traditions. (And so far, my favorite musical group is the local Simon & Garfunkel tribute band Old Friends; they played at today’s presser, and darned if some of them really weren’t old friends. Well, middle-aged friends, at least.)

Want more information about the festival? You can go to their website at www.cherryfestival.org.

A New “Virtual Birding Trail,” Just in Time for This Year’s Leelanau Birding Festival

The loons are back in the harbor at Old Mission!

Every year we Up-Northers wait for that One Day: the day when we know spring has finally and irrevocably arrived, when we can finally open the windows and let the warm, moist air of April flow through the house with its scents of moist earth and new growth.

It arrived on Saturday, thank God, and it came with a torrent of birdsong. Honestly, it was as though every songbird in the state decided to spend some time at Old Mission Harbor this weekend. Warblers and jays, robin and sparrows, flickers and cardinals. We even saw a pair of bluebirds splashing in the birdbath — a first for us!

Bud the eagle soars over the harbor again…

I’m not really a birder in the formal sense. But I see a lot of them. Birders, I mean. Each year, hundreds of them migrate to the dunelands of Northwestern Michigan with their binoculars and notebooks to enjoy this region’s birding opportunities.

Many come for the annual spring migration, between mid-April and the middle of May, when a diverse population of migratory birds congregate on the triangular Leelanau Peninsula west of Traverse City. Others wait until the end of May for nesting season – and for the annual Leelanau Peninsula Birding Festival, a three-day cornucopia of field trips, talks and socializing designed with birders in mind.

Now they’ll also have a new Internet tool to help them find prime birding sites: the Sleeping Bear Birding Trail, a web-based “road map” to over 120 miles of shoreline. The trail includes almost 40 birding sites within a short distance of state highway M-22 from the Traverse City limits to Manistee.

A piping plover at Sleeping Bear Dunes

The Trail is anchored by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which has over 71,000 acres of public land and 35 miles of beaches, including vital habitat for the Piping Plover, an endangered shorebird that needs vast stretches of undisturbed beach. It also encompasses the homes of the Wings of Wonder raptor rehabilitation center and Saving Birds Through Habitat, a non-profit organization devoted to the protection and restoration of critical bird habitat.

Electronic birding trails have been launched successfully in Texas, Montana and Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Birding Festival organizer Dave Barrons, one of the minds behind the new trail, says the Sleeping Bear area’s distinct seasons, diverse topography, extensive shoreline and large number of natural areas with public access make it a naturalist’s paradise.

“This is not just a single trail where you get out and hike around looking for birds,” he says. “It’s a travel route, a way of connecting a number of birding sites in a way that allows you to include them in your itinerary.”

Birders checking out the plovers at Sleeping Bear

One key feature of the 123-mile trail is what Barrons and fellow birder Mick Seymour call “citizen science.” Over time, individual birders who use the website will report their sightings and observations into a large electronic database that can be used by researchers.

“We now have the ability to meticulously record what we see and hear,” says Seymour. “Birders all over the world are recording where, when, and how many and this data is enormously valuable to the science and understanding of species distribution and abundance.”

Barrons says the Birding Trail will be up and running by April 1 – well in advance of the Leelanau Peninsula Birding Festival, which is scheduled  May 29 to June 2.

The 2013 festival will include several new features – including an excursion to the nesting grounds of the rare Kirtland’s warbler, a songbird that lives only in the dense foliage of young jackpine trees. Nine other field trips include visits to the beach habitat of the piping plover and a popular  “Birding By Tall Ship” voyage on the schooner Inland Seas.

The Birding Festival  will operate out of Fountain Point, a classic “Up North” resort near the village of Lake Leelanau, where participants will gather each evening after their excursions to listen to presentations and talks from birding leaders.

The keynote speaker for this year’s festival is Brian Allen, one of one of Michigan’s best-known birders, who spent most of 2012 working on a Michigan “Big Year” – a competition to identify as many bird species as possible in a single year. His talk will explore the ways in which life can get in the way of such an effort, how many species he ended up with, and about the importance of conservation to the future of birding.

Birding is now the country’s number-one outdoor activity. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are currently 51.3 million birders, and 16 million Americans say they look for birds when they travel. Several Traverse City area resorts and lodges list nearby birding areas in their promotional literature, and a few even arrange guided outings on request.

Leelanau Wineries Introduce a Loopy New Wine-Touring System

Winemakers Cristin Hosner and Charlie Edson explain what goes on at Bel Lago Vineyards.

By MIKE NORTON

Over the past couple of days, spring seems to have made its definitive arrival here in Traverse City, so it’s weird to think that just this past Saturday we awoke to find a substantial amount of snow on the ground.

But that didn’t deter me or the dozens of food, wine and travel writers who had signed up to spend the day visiting the 25 wineries of the Leelanau Peninsula. After all, wine-tasting is something you can do in almost any kind of weather – and we were rewarded for our tenacity by mid-morning, when the sun made its first tentative appearance and began burning away that snow.

Each spring for the past five years, the member wineries of the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners’ Association have conducted this annual weekend get-together to introduce members of the travel media to the new wineries and new vintages of northern Michigan’s oldest and most densely populated viticultural region.

Fortunately for the participants, nobody was expected to visit all 25 Leelanau wineries. In fact, the LPVA has created a nifty new system to make wine-touring in their region easier, less confusing and more adventurous.

Unlike our other wine-growing area — the relatively narrow Old Mission Peninsula, whose geography makes its seven wineries pretty easy to find and visit – the Leelanau Peninsula is big enough to include several good-sized villages and a labyrinth of country roads that sometimes even confuse the locals.

Sampling the new wines at Good Harbor Vineyards

Couple that with the fact that this steep triangle of land contains one-fourth of all the wineries in Michigan, with more being added every year, and you can see what might happen. Nobody with any sense would try to tour 10 wineries in a day, and visiting 25 wineries is downright impossible. So vineyards close to Traverse City, where most visitors stay, tend to get lots and lots of business, while those located farther away, in the Peninsula’s northern and western marches, get fewer visitors even when their wines are superb.

I have to admit that I’ve done this myself, and I should know better.

This year the Vintner’s Association decided to do something about this growing problem. They divided their lengthy Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail into three separate  “touring loops.”

The Grand Traverse Bay Loop stretches along the peninsula’s eastern edge between Traverse City and Suttons Bay, and features nine wineries and the Leelanau Bike Trail. The Sleeping Bear Loop includes six wineries in the western half of the peninsula between Glen Arbor and Lake Leelanau, plus the added beauty of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The Northern Loop covers 10 wineries in and around the villages of Lake Leelanau, Leland, Northport and Omena, and includes destinations like the Grand Traverse Lighthouse and Leland’s historic Fishtown.

“The growth in wineries in Leelanau Peninsula has been amazing, and these loops should make it easier for visitors to plan trips through wine country,” said wine trail president Matt Gregory.

Jason Homa of Cherry Republic pours a sample of their Conservancy wine for Charlie Wunsch of Edible Grand Traverse.

The system still seems a little lopsided –the Northern Loop’s 10 wineries and the Grand Traverse Bay Loop’s nine wineries are really more than a judicious wine-lover ought to try in a single day – but it’s a big improvement over the previous system. And the Sleeping Bear Loop (which I tried out on Saturday) was just about perfect. I got to see some old friends that I hadn’t seen in years (Bel Lago, Longview and Good Harbor) made another of my frequent visits to Cherry Republic, and was able to explore two wineries I hadn’t been to before (Chateau Fontaine and the brand-new Laurentide Winery).

Best of all, I think this loopy new system encourages visitors to take time to enjoy the special atmosphere and character of each area instead of scurrying around from one corner of the Peninsula to the next. Honestly, wine is one of those things you should enjoy in a leisurely manner.

Visitors can pick up a Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail brochure with a handy map at any of the LPVA member wineries as well as a number of other store and businesses throughout the area. The brochure and maps are available online at http://www.lpwines.com. The trail has also released a free iPhone app for easy access to Leelanau wineries, lodging, restaurants and more.

An Outdoor Adventure Phone App for Traverse City

Hiking at Sleeping Bear Point

By MIKE NORTON

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Suppose you want to take a hike in the woods, but you’ve only got an hour of free time and you’re traveling with your elderly mom. Or maybe you’re looking for a beach where you can take your dog, but you don’t want to drive too far to get there.

If you’re visiting Traverse City, help is just a click away. Thanks to a free smart phone app called “Experience 231,” visitors to our town can instantly access information about 300 year-round outdoor experiences – hiking, cycling, snowshoeing, skiing, swimming, paddling and birding — with a user interface that allows them to instantly select one that fits their particular needs and interests.

“You simply tell the app what you want to do and how much time you want to spend, and it takes care of the rest,” says Treenen Sturman of the Grand Traverse Conservation District, one of seven environmental organizations that banded together to produce the application. “There are even accommodations for pet owners and people with disabilities.”

The app will be available in online app stores by May 1 and is scheduled to go active on May 19.

The Traverse City region has a population of 160,000 people and welcomes an estimated 2.5 million visitors each year. And I think it’s fair to say that most of them come here to enjoy the region’s scenic beauty and its many opportunities for outdoor recreation.

In March, Traverse City was listed by the prestigious Fodor’s travel group as one of America’s 10 Best Small Towns, and in 2012 National Geographic named it one of its Top 10 Summer Trips. But most visitors to the region tend to cluster at  a handful of heavily-publicized  trails, swimming areas and other sites — because they simply haven’t been told about the others.

For Sturman and his colleagues, that presented a challenge. They didn’t want to discourage recreational tourism to the area – just to spread it out a little more. The result should be a better experience for the visiting traveler and less wear and tear on recreational assets that are currently being overused.

“We’d like Traverse City to be known worldwide as an absolutely premiere destination for outdoor recreation,” he says. “We want people to come here because there’s a zillion things you can do outdoors, no matter what time of year it is.”

Sturman’s organization and six other land stewardship and local government groups were able to band together, coordinating efforts and pooling resources to gather and organize the massive database that was incorporated into Experience 231 (the number refers to the region’s telephone area code). Volunteers hiked, biked, swam and paddled each site, and the data will be updated four times a year to keep it fresh.

“This is the first app that puts all this kind of information together in one place,” says Jonathan Campbell of Lake Effect Associates, the company that designed Experience 231. “We’ve looked at products from other destinations all over the country, and no one else has anything that comes even close.”

For more information about the Experience 231 smart phone app and other environmental projects in the Traverse City area, go to http://www.natureiscalling.org.

Change may be Inevitable, but it’s also Inscrutable

A spring sky over West Grand Traverse Bay.

By MIKE NORTON

“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land – but he was talking about the way spring stirs us up and makes us feel things we’d rather forget. Here in Northern Michigan, April’s cruelty is the teasing kind. Sometimes she makes good on her veiled promises of warmth and greenery, but just as often she leaves us shivering in the gray dusk wondering what we did do tick her off this time.

But the year rolls on regardless. Sooner or later, spring will be here.

I noticed some of the signs yesterday, while walking out to Leffingwell Point to stretch my legs: a plenitude of birdsong, a smell of dampness in the woods, a swelling of fat buds at the tips of twigs. Change sometimes comes slowly, but it comes nevertheless.

Which got me thinking about other kinds of change in our surroundings. As I made my way through the forest, I could see new evidence of the ways it has gradually been transformed during the quarter-century I’ve lived in Old Mission. Old trails that were once well-traveled have grown faint; several are now completely impassable because of fallen trees, and will probably disappear altogether in another year or two. Deer, once a rarity in this neighborhood, are becoming plentiful. So are other creatures, including the bald eagles who are now a frequent sight along the shore.

In some ways, this is because the place has gradually healed itself from the depredations of a century ago, when so many forests were cut down and wildfires raged across the region. But it’s also because of changes in the human population of my neighborhood.

Still water at Old Mission Point

This was once a place of large families, whose children ran and laughed and played games in these woods, where wood was gathered for fireplaces and berries were gathered for pies. The children are old now. They return only rarely to this place of their childhood, where they sit on benches gazing at the water, wondering why their own grandchildren can’t be persuaded to look up from their video games long enough to love it as much as they did.

When we speak of changes in the environment, these aren’t the changes we usually consider. We talk about disappearing wilderness, endangered wildlife, and those things are certainly a serious concern in many parts of the world. But in my landscape, there are other signs pointing, however tentatively, in a different direction.

Walking to work this morning, for instance, I could hear the pilings being driven into the ground nearby for the new Hotel Indigo along Traverse City’s Grandview Parkway, the first new hotel built here since the 92-room Cambria Suites was built in 2009. And I have friends who’ll be rolling their eyes, saying “Just what we need. Another hotel in Traverse City.”

But here’s an interesting factoid: even in this prosperous tourist town, there are actually fewer hotel rooms today there were 10, 15 or 20 years ago. A decade ago, this was because many resort hotels were being converted to timeshares and condominiums. Today, others are being reopened as apartments for senior citizens. Still others have simply been leveled and turned into parkland or open space.

Change happens. But it isn’t always easy to find a meaningful pattern, and far more difficult to use that information to make accurate predictions about the future.

Which brings me back to spring. Last year we had temperatures in the high 80s by March, and everyone was wondering if we were seeing a drastic shift in climate. Now we’ve got snow in April and we’d all be willing to settle for a few days in the middle 50s.

Me, I’m going for a walk.

Spring Sunrise at Clinch Park

I’m Just a Walker in a Runner’s Town

By MIKE NORTON

First, a word of confession. I’m a walker, not a runner.

I could dress this all up with some talk about why mine is a less obsessive-compulsive approach to fitness, one that allows me to slow down and enjoy the world around me, but the truth is that running just doesn’t fit my personality. On the road of life, I’ve always been in the slow lane.

On the other hand, you can’t live in Traverse City without knowing lots of runners because this is a runner’s town. Folks have been out running the city streets and pathways as soon as the ice began to clear away last month, and now that spring is edging reluctantly closer they’re beginning to emerge in earnest.  There’s even a brand-new festival starting up this month to promote a new wrinkle in the local runners’ universe.

It’s the Traverse City Trail Running Festival, and it’ll be held April 12-13 through the woods of the Pere Marquette State Forest, starting and ending at Timber Ridge Resort (better known for hosting the annual North American Vasa ski race in February.) The festival will begin with a 10K relay race on Friday, and continue the next day with a series of 11K, 25K and 50K races.

“The Pere Marquette Forest is such a beautiful area, and we’re certain that runners will love the scenery,” said Eric Houghton of Endurance Evolution, the promotional company that’s organizing the event. True enough – I love walking, skiing and snowshoeing through that area, which will include a fair-sized chunk of the Vasa trail and goes through a picture-perfect landscape of Up North pines, firs and hardwoods – but it won’t make a runner out of me. I would inevitably trip over a tree root, or my own shoelaces.

But the announcement did start me thinking about all the racing events that are held in or around the Traverse City area these days. Without even trying, I could think of dozens – from little 5Ks all the way up to major marathons. On May 25, for instance there’s the Bayshore Marathon, a little race that’s grown so famous – and so popular – that it turns away hundreds of runners every year for fear of ruining the charm and character that have made it such a popular event for the past 28 years.

Hosted for 31 years by the Traverse City Track Club, the Bayshore promotes itself as “a marathon for runners, put on by runners” and is certified as a Boston Marathon qualifier. This year the Bayshore will allow 11,400 runners in its three races: the main marathon, the half marathon, and the Bayshore 10K run.

Why such big interest in a small-town race? Mainly, it’s the setting. As its name implies, the Bayshore’s route follows the shoreline of East Grand Traverse Bay up the Old Mission Peninsula, an area that features some of the most breathtaking views available on any marathon course. On one side there’s the famous bay with its Caribbean array of jade green, cobalt blue and turquoise water. On the other side, elegant residential areas gradually fade into a landscape of vineyards and orchards where, since the race takes place in May, participants are often treated to the sight of thousands of blossoming cherry trees.

But many runners are just as charmed by the small-town cheerfulness of race spectators, who make up for their lack of numbers by their friendliness and creativity (how many marathons feature ice cream at their refreshment stops?) and by Traverse City plentiful tourist amenities. That may explain why races also play a prominent role in the area’s many festivals.

In fact, the National Cherry Festival’s July 6 “Festival of Races” was the area’s first official footrace; it began in 1973 and is now in its 40^th year). But there are also races at almost every other local festival, from Kalkaska’s National Trout Festival (April 27) to the Empire Asparagus Festival (May 18) and Bellaire’s Rubber Ducky Festival (Aug. 17). Even the local wine industry has gotten into the act: each fall the winemakers of the Leelanau Peninsula hold a seven-mile fall run through their vineyards called the Harvest Stompede (Sept. 7-8), which also includes tours and tastings at their wineries.

For some competitors, even a marathon isn’t enough of a challenge. Triathlons are becoming an increasingly popular option in the Traverse City, and there are now at least four different versions of this grueling running/swimming/cyling event going on in the area this summer.

The first is on Saturday, June 8, when the fourth annual M-22 Challenge takes place. Founded by kiteboarding entrepreneurs Matt and Keegan Myers, the 22-mile triathlon combines a starting run (including a climb up the Sleeping Bear Dunes!) followed by a 17-mile bicycle race around Big and Little Glen Lakes and a paddling race (kayaks, surf skis of stand-up paddleboards) across Little Glen Lake.

Then, on July 7, the twelfth annual Inter-Rockin’ 3 is held in nearby Interlochen, featuring three different options — 1.5k swim, a 40k bicycle race and a 10k run; a 500m swim, 20k cycling race and 5k run; or a 5k run, 20k cycle race and 5k run – as well as a pair of “aquabike” events that ferature just the swimming/biking parts. On Aug. 18, there’s the Traverse City Triathlon, held at Bowers Harbor on the Old Mission Peninsula. Finally, on Sept. 1, the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa sponsors the annual BAREFOOT Triathlon.

Running doesn’t shut down with the end of summer, either. On Sept 28, there’s a Run Vasa! event, a late-season run (5K, 10K and 25K) at through the Vasa Head Trail.  On Oct. 13, there’s the Lighthouse Half Marathon – a very scenic three-mile run around the Mission Point Lighthouse on Old Mission, and just before Halloween there’s the Zombie Run, which attracts lots of runners (my daughter included) who like to dress up as rotting corpses when they run.

Hmmm. I know I’ve missed a bunch. Too many races….

The Zombie Run