Sleeping Bear setting records this year

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Record-Eagle/ Marta Hepler DrahosVisitors climb, photograph and take in the view at the Lake Michigan Overlook along Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. Record-Eagle/ Marta Hepler Draho
Record-Eagle/ Marta Hepler DrahosVisitors stream to and from the Lake Michigan Overlook along Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. Record-Eagle/ Marta Hepler Draho

July 15, 2012

Sleeping Bear setting records this year

By Marta Hepler Drahos mdrahos@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Tue Jul 31, 2012, 03:05 PM EDT

GLEN ARBOR — Christine and Dru Siley live about six hours away from the Grand Traverse region, but weren’t aware of the area until seeing it in a Pure Michigan ad last year.

Visitors climb, photograph and take in the view at the Lake Michigan Overlook along Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.

Now the Lakewood, Ohio, couple is taking their second vacation in the region with their children, Jonah, 6, and Eloise, 4.

“Last year we felt we just got oriented to the area and we wanted to come back. There’s so much to do,” said Dru Siley, from an overlook along the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, where the family was spending the day.

The park more than doubled its June 2011 attendance, with 257,000 visitors, said park superintendent Dusty Shultz. Year-to-date attendance is up nearly 59 percent from last year.

“In talking with our rangers out there, and our staff, they’re seeing a lot of people a lot earlier. So I’m thinking that July is going to be another good month and that we may have close to a record, if not a record, year,” she said.

Shultz attributes the uptick to early warm weather and last summer’s recognition of the national lakeshore as the “Most Beautiful Place in America” in a Good Morning America voting contest.

“We just had a huge number of hits on our website after the announcement was made and I think a number of people in the fall were planning their summer vacations, and we’re seeing the effects of that,” she said.

Nearby businesses are seeing the effects too.

“This was our busiest June we’ve ever had,” said Ann Derrick, owner of Good Harbor Grill and two other business in Glen Arbor, a stone’s throw awayfrom the national lakeshore. “We saw it starting last Labor Day. Labor Day was crazy here. This year, in Glen Arbor in particular, the new (Sleeping Bear Dunes Heritage Trail) bike trail is a huge, huge draw. People love it. You can ride from Glen Arbor to the Dunes. If you did it on the road, it’d be really steep hills.”

Visitors stream to and from the Lake Michigan Overlook along Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.

Visitors also are warming up to escorted rides along the Pierce Stocking drive via electric pedal assist bikes, said Phillip Lepak, owner of Sleeping Bear Electric Bikes.

“Because it’s new and the first of its kind in a U.S. national park, it’s been busy,” said Lepak, who opened the business in June. “It’s great. These aren’t cyclists. They’re people who wouldn’t normally ride bikes. They’re enjoying nature, the canopy of trees.”

Richard and Marcia Braid brought along their own mode of transportation — kayaks — on their first visit to the national lakeshore,

“Our ultimate destination is Mackinac Island, but when we were planning the route online, this popped out at us,” said Marcia Braid, from the park visitor center, the couple’s first stop after arriving from Fayetteville, N.C. “We’re here for four days and we’ve already decided it’s not enough.”

Judy Kalter has a cottage rental unit in Glen Arbor that attracted visitors only a few days last year. This year the cottage is “booked solid,” said Kalter, who works at Derrick’s Glen Arbor Botanicals art gallery.

Not all visitors are from out of state, say Derrick and Dune Dogs Chicagostyle hot dogs owner Bill Thompson. Many are northern Michigan residents who are venturing to park territory for the first time.

“That whole Fourth of July week was bigger than I’ve ever seen,” Thompson said. “I’m seeing more day trippers. They’re from Gaylord, Grayling, Kalkaska.”

“To me it was interesting that some people said, ‘We always stayed in Traverse City but never drove out to Leelanau or the Sleeping Bear Dunes,’” Derrick said. “We talked to someone in Maple City who had never been to the Dunes.”

Not everyone is as happy about the park’s newfound notoriety. Ferndale residents Marc and Kris Haas have been coming to the national lakeshore since the mid-’70s and find it more crowded every year.

“We used to camp at the Platte River Campground until they ‘improved’ it,” said Kris Haas, who is beginning to prefer camping in the quieter Upper Peninsula. “Then there was constant traffic, smoke from 400 campfires. Now we stay at the (Empire) township campground. Even there you have to make reservations now. This year between the (national) exposure and the heat, people are running this way.”

The summer’s unseasonably warm weather has meant more crowded beaches throughout the national lakeshore.

“I’ve seen more activity at the beaches in July than in all the time I’ve worked here, with the heat and all the extra visitors,” said Jeff Chalup, a maintenance worker at the D.H. Day Campground and a 17-year park employee. “There was a family from Texas at the Dune Climb yesterday. They thought this was the greatest weather they’d ever seen.”