Pyramid Point

We recently found ourselves discussing with a friend what we should do to commemorate the anniversary of his birth. Head to the bar or a nice restaurant as per usual? Well, spring is meekly poking its head out so why not try and get outside? And bring beer with us to celebrate? Sounds like a great birthday!

We rolled out to the County to hike up to Pyramid Point, unprepared for the slushy, snow-covered trail. Well, except for the beer we had with us. That made it a party. The primary parking lot near the trailhead and the dirt road up to it are still closed for the season. This adds maybe a quarter mile to the hike. But our effort was rewarded with an inspiring view of the ice breaking up out on Lake Michigan underneath clear blue skies. There were even moments it felt like the sun was warming us up from the stinging breeze coming off the lake.

We had an additional bonus for our efforts; the Point to ourselves. This’ll change drastically in the months to come so I recommend getting out now if you have a chance.

Cheers to time spent with friends outside under the blue skies of northern Michigan!

Twigs & Swigs No. 6 – SBHT & LTI

Photo by Brian Beckwith

Sleeping Bear Dunes seems to get all of its love during the warm summer months. But spending a winter afternoon skiing through the snow-covered hills with some great company, followed by a satisfying meal at Little Traverse Inn, is pretty tough to beat. We began our afternoon on Leelanau County’s Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail, a 4.2 mile trail from Glen Arbor to the Dune Climb. The trail will expand to 15 miles this year and will eventually be 27 miles in length.

It’s groomed for both skate & classic skiing, but it’s open to all uses, including snowshoeing & fatbiking. Our group consisted of people on skate & classic skis as well as snowshoes. In fact, a park ranger stopped our snowshoer to let him know that snowshoeing was allowed and if anybody stated otherwise, they could head over to the ranger station. Bravo, Mr. Park Ranger!

The Trail’s Facebook page is a great resource to keep up on trail conditions and grooming schedules. If you’re into fast hilly skiing then I’d suggest sticking to the VASA, you won’t find much elevation change, spandex, or crowded parking lots on this trail, just a casual good time.

Just a short jaunt north on M-22 will land you at Little Traverse Inn for some post-ski sustenance. Their menu features both English and Indian food, and they have a wonderfully strong beer selection, including 3 firkins at all times. But it isn’t the food that draws me to Little Traverse Inn, it’s the atmosphere. There’s a certain comfortable joviality there, highlighted by the owner’s broad smile and the constant stream of sports (rugby if it’s on) on the television that hangs over a beautiful wooden bar.

The restaurant is broken up into different rooms so chances are your group could end up having a wing to itself. It’s a great place to spend a leisurely few hours eating, drinking, & visiting with others, especially if you love bacon & candy.

The Locals: Nate Crane and his Rare Bird Quests

Photo by Kim Schwaiger

Local premier-birder Nate Crane’s pursuit of the “rare bird” took a different twist several years ago. Unfulfilled earning a living in his first career of insurance, Nate began working on the necessary prerequisites to obtain a masters degree in evolutionary biology and ecology at Cornell University (of ornithology fame). To earn some cash he found himself managing the bar at a local microbrewery and thinking to himself, “You know? I could do this!” Fast forward to today and you’ll find Nate working his tail feathers off seven days a week towards opening day of his new pursuit: Rare Bird Brewpub at 229 Lake Avenue in Traverse City.

Rare Bird won’t just be another taphouse or brewery, but a unique blend of both that you won’t find elsewhere in the area. They’ll offer 35 beers on tap, 6-10 of which they’ll brew in house, with the rest of the lineup being filled by the burgeoning craft beer industry in addition to wine, cider, and liquor. The brewpub is situated in the old TC Canning building next to Om Cafe (formerly the Loading Dock). Nate has reclaimed some of the history of the fruit cannery by renovating the interior with old apple crates obtained from local farms. The space will include a relaxing lounge area, along with U-shaped, high-back booths, and big open tables milled from the remains of a Cottonwood tree that was on a friend’s farmhouse in Northport (what was once the tallest tree in Leelanau County). We were lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the unfinished space, and while it was still a work in progress, we’re eagerly anticipating the finished product.

Rare Bird brewer and co-owner, Tina Schuett, originally from Wisconsin, will focus on American-style ales. When the duo found their brew equipment from Cape May Brewery in New Jersey, a primo birding location with its own birding festival, they knew it was meant to be.

Viewing of the brewing area

Viewing of the brewing area

A menu of fusion pub food (think classic burgers, Mexican-inspired dishes, and Asian-influenced tastes) will also be offered late into the evening – 1 a.m. on the days the bar stays open until 2 a.m. Nate, a fellow nacho connoisseur, also personally promised to have the best nachos in the area (excitement uncontrollable).

Crane recalls that it hasn’t been an easy process. The venture has been in the works for about 10 months. He also had to resort to crowd-funding (a successful $19,000 IndieGoGo campaign) in order to raise capital when his SBA loan got stalled with the government shutdown. Not only has he relied on his own elbow grease and handy-man skills, but the support of a group of willing friends who have been making the push towards opening the doors. Special shout-outs go to Nate’s fiancée Hanna Taylor for her support throughout the process; Rory Carroll, who has made the drive up from Detroit (where he works as a senior editor for Autoweek magazine) many a weekend; Rod Lowes, a renaissance man recently retired from TCAPS who religiously comes in to lend a hand daily after dropping his wife off at work; and Del Whitman, a local gunsmith – his name is Del and he fixes guns, need we say more?

While this project has consumed all of Nate’s free time as of late, he still tries to fit in time to spend with his feathered friends, a passion instilled in him at an early age while building bird boxes with his grandpa and spending time with Marie Hoffman, the bird lady of Central Neighborhood (where Nate grew up). He spoke to us of hopefully getting away this winter still for a birding trip to the eastern UP. When searching out our avian companions locally, he surprised us by suggesting we visit the Boardman River Trail south of the YMCA, or Wuerfel Park near Chums Corners where there have been quite a few Snowy Owl spottings. When not out birding, Nate can be found hiking through Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore or fishing on Long Lake. And when asked where he’d grab a pint other than his own taproom, he had plenty good to say about what’s on tap at 7 Monks, Brewery Terra Firma, and Short’s Brewing Company.

So whether you see Nate Crane behind the bar or out on the trails with his binoculars, we believe he’s one of those individuals making Northern Michigan one of the best place there is to live, eat, and play: so please say thank you (how to sign thank you can be found here so as not to disturb the birds) when you cross paths with him.

Stay tuned for updates on Rare Bird’s opening day (hopefully in February) on their Facebook page and see more photos of the process in the gallery below.

Club mugs

Club mugs

Breaking: Local Candidates Scrap Election & Host Multi-Stage Bike Race to Elect Winner

Northern Swag learned today from an unverified source that local city commission candidates have challenged each other to a bicycle race to decide the outcome of the election today. With this election’s hot-button issue being how many miles a week do you bike, the candidates, during the middle of a heated debate over carbon versus steel bike frames, decided to settle the score once and for all on the hilly roads of Leelanau County.

Gary Howe, the popular author of the blog My Wheels are Turning, was quoted as he left the debate on his singlespeed that he would “kick everybody’s butt” because he’d been “riding a unicycle since he was 2-years old” and has “quads of steel.”

Candidate Tim Werner was seen here preparing for the event by racing little kids on the VASA Singletrack. He won that 13-mile tuneup race handily, beating 7-year-old runner up “Little” Timmy by just over 5 hours. Timmy wasn’t able to be quoted for this article as he couldn’t stop crying long enough to catch his breath.

Local sources have confirmed that political newcomer, John Reid, who based on his photo in The Ticker, recently gave a humorous and heartwarming toast at his best friend’s wedding, will also be at the start line for the “race-off.”

Rounding out the field will be the remaining candidates, Jody Bergman, Pat McGuire, Ross Richardson, & Jan Warren. Richardson is the dark-horse contender with that burly, manly beard he sports, although with the unexpected cycling race taking the place of the election, it could create some unwanted drag for him on the bike. When it was suggested he shave it for aerodynamic purposes, Richardson responded he’d rather lose the race than shave his whiskers and become, “less of a man.”

Apparently incumbent mayoral candidate, Michael Estes, felt so left out of the competition, he decided to drunkenly drive his car in the bike lane on the opposite side of the road to try and run down any potential contenders.

We caught up with the candidates to inquire about their positions on the ballot initiatives, requests for funding for road improvements and improvements to the local public schools, including a new auditorium. They all agreed, with the exception of one candidate who still uses training wheels, that the only road improvements they would support would be for bike-only pathways that included the banning of all motor vehicles and Huffy brand bicycles within city limits and that the auditorium should be built only if it included a track in order to increase the popularity of track cycling in the area.

Da Yoop – Part Deux

Queue part 2 of the UP tour (you can find part 1 here).

Unfortunately the amazing weather we had at 12-Mile Beach didn’t last. What do you do when it rains for 5 hours while camping? Pretty much nothing:

So after eating, and drinking, and drinking, and drinking in the rain for most of the afternoon, the rain let up a tad. So we busted out the cameras and played around a little bit with some nighttime photography.

 

Our reprieve from being wet didn’t last long. The rain came in heavy and sideways for most of the night, finding every weakness in our tent. This made for a very hasty pack-up the next morning in search of “dryness,” aka, our hotel room in Marquette.

We couldn’t however resist the short hike down to Miner’s Falls on our way westward for a photo op (yes, that’s me at the bottom of the picture looking for my can of industrial strength, cancerous bug spray that fell out of my pack and down 200 feet of slippery rock).

Miner’s Falls

Arrival in Marquette meant a hot shower and warm, dry clothes. We had game planned for a short nap after the sleepless night in the monsoon, but there was too much to do and see! One of the must stops in Marquette is Presque Isle Park, 5 minutes along Lake Superior northwest of town. There you’ll find some commanding views of the Lake as well as some cliff jumping.

Lake Superior from an advantaged viewpoint in Presque Isle Park

Lake Superior from Presque Isle Park in Marquette

We were coincidentally in Marquette the same night as UP Beer Fest. Let the fun continue…

UP Beer Fest is hosted by the Michigan Brewers’ Guild every September in Marquette, right along Lake Superior in beautiful Mattson Lower Harbor Park. It features over 50 Michigan breweries, local food, and live music. This was my first time attending, but I’m already planning next year’s trip up for it.

UP Beer Fest

The beer fest actually ends at 6, which was great because it gave us a chance to check out some of the great spots to grab a drink and a bite at in Marquette.

Post beer fest stops included, Ore Dock Brewing Company, Black Rocks Brewery, Das Steinhaus for dinner, and then a nightcap at the Northland Pub inside the Landmark. Both Ore Dock & Black Rocks brew some great beer. Black Rocks doesn’t have a lot of space to hang out, but they’re currently doing construction on their new facility. Ore Dock on the other hand has 2 levels with tons of seating and typically has live music on the weekends. Both are worth checking out when you’re in town.

Dinner at Das Steinhaus consisted of traditional German fare. I wasn’t even sure what I had, but it was delicious. They just opened in August, but both times I’ve been there it was packed, a sure sign of success.

I’ve been to Marquette more times than I can count, and many of the evenings out end at the Landmark. I’ts old, creepy, and awesome. They always have a good draft beer selection, but we usually end up drinking spirits or cocktails. I can’t explain this, but it just feels right (until the next morning).

Needless to say, an evening out in Marquette was a great way to end our UP tour.

If you’re interested in heading up over the Bridge, I highly recommend having a game plan on where you want to go and what you want to see. There’s a ton of amazing sights in the UP, but it’s a huge place and I wouldn’t suggest just heading up and “figuring it out.” In 5 days we traveled almost 900 miles, but we knew exactly where we were going each day and how far it was to get there. Also, your phone may not work in many areas, so might I suggest buying a gazetteer. I have one of Michigan and it has a lot of the dirt roads we traveled on it for easy navigating. And my last piece of advice – it is almost always colder in the UP than in the LP. Bring warm clothes!

Special thanks to my travel companion and photographer Jason Helbig for contributing photos to this post.

Please enjoy this photo of a waterfall.

Munising Falls

Copyright &copy Northern Swag. Hosting by SodaServer.com