Midwest Guest

History and olives on the menu at Michigan's Halo Burger

Having a burger "my way" means I want my burger garnished with a generous helping of sliced olives, and the Flint, Michigan, based Halo Burger is one of the few places where I know I can get olive burgers.

I don't remember when I first discovered Halo Burgers, but once I tried one of their olive-laden burgers, I was hooked. I even keep a jar of salad olives on hand at home so I can make my own olive burgers as heading to Halo Burger in Flint or Birch Run entails about an hour's drive for us.

It funny because I'm not that big of a fast-food burger fan. If I stop by a burger joint more than about twice a year, that's a lot for me. Still, when we found ourselves on I-75 near Birch Run recently, I made a special point to stop for an olive burger at the local Halo Burger.

Halo Burger looks like any number of other fast food joints, but I especially like the fact that it is a small local chain that traces its history back to 1923.

A man named Sam Blair opened the Kewpee Hotel in downtown Flint, Michigan, during 1923 and sold burgers from a boxcar-type wagon near his hotel. His "Kewpee burgers" with a flat-bottom bun and garnished with mayo, lettuce, tomato, and olives became very popular, and live on as Halo Burgers today.

Bill Thomas began working for Blair in 1938 and eventually ended up purchasing the business from Blair's estate in 1958. Someone else owned the "Kewpee" name, so Thomas renamed his hamburger biz to Bill Thomas' Halo Burger.

The Halo Burger menu may look like a typical burger joint menu, but the ability to add items like olives, bacon, or banana peppers to your burger and chasing it down with a thick shake or Boston Cooler (a vanilla ice cream and Vernor's ginger ale concoction developed in Detroit hand having nothing to do with Boston and everything to do with Vernor's here) makes it a great road food meal with a little local flavor.

We had the black raspberry shake that was the month's special the last time we visited Halo Burger. Again, I'm not a big fast-food shake person, but I loved this shake that tasted like fresh, thick, soft-serve ice cream.

If you visit the Web site, be sure to check out the gallery of photos on the Media page that follow Halo's history from the 1920s to present day.

Halo Burger has a handful of locations, with about a half-dozen outlets in the city of Flint. The Birch Run Halo Burger is particularly convenient for a quick road food fix as it is right off of I-75, a major north-south expressway in Michigan, and just across the highway from a major outlet shopping mall.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Birch Run

Where I live: Focus on the work of local photographers at new Exposure.Detroit show

The work of talented local photographers is again the focus of a quarterly showing of images from the Flickr-based Exposure.Detroit group at the Bean & Leaf Cafe in downtown Royal Oak, Michigan.

Poster designed by Jon DeBoer

The show, which opened at the local coffeehouse on May 15, is the latest in a series of shows by Exposure.Detroit and spotlights the work of five photographers.

This quarterly show includes the work of Jon DeBoer, Anne Savage, Michelle and Chris Gerard, Anna Lysa, and Derek Farr (check out the links in this paragraph for a sneak peek at some of their work).

I'm not much for generic art that adorns the walls at many businesses, so the images showcased at the Bean & Leaf immediately caught my eye when I first noticed one of the shows as my local writers' group met at the coffeehouse. I've seen many subsequent quarterly photo shows at the cafe over the last couple of years, and there are always at least a few images that I am sorry to see taken down at the end of a exhibit--even as I know there will be even more great images replacing them with the next quarter's installation.

Although, if you really fall in love with a particular image at one of the Exposure.Detroit shows, the photographers will often sell you a print so you can support the work of a local artist at a pretty reasonable price.

I sometimes find the shows a bit heavy on images of "urban decay", although the regular Exposure.Detroit showings at the Garden City Hospital and a themed show staged last summer at the Bean & Leaf asked members to submit some of the more positive images in their collections (Tim showed a couple of his photos at Garden City and at that Bean & Leaf show last year).

The group, which includes well over 1,600 members, from beginning to long-time professional photographers, is open to any interested photographer. Check out the group on Flickr to learn more about Exposure.Detroit, read the active discussion boards, and sign up to join the group.

Exposure.Detroit promotes camaraderie, networking, sharing knowledge, and promoting the work of their members through shows, social events, group photo shoots, seminars, and other events.

I appreciate the idea of a local business supporting the work of local artists, and hope to see the partnership between the Bean & Leaf and Exposure.Detroit continue for a long time!

 

Note: "Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Cheese Haus Maus and Kern's Sausages: Frankenmuth, Michigan, landmarks

I prefer to buy something local to the area where I'm traveling and something that won't take up too much room in my luggage or already overstuffed house, so some local cheese and a stick of spicy summer sausage were the perfect souvenirs of our short trip to Frankenmuth.

While most Frankenmuth visitors know about the massive Bronner's Christmas store and mega all-you-can-eat chicken dinner restaurants, the Cheese Haus maus is another hard-to-miss sight right in the heart of Frankenmuth's downtown.

I always remember that huge mouse perched on the big wedge of cheese along Main Street, so it comes as no surprise to me that to learn that the business has deep roots in the town.

Frankenmuth's Hubinger family was the first to open businesses in the small town in the mid-1840s with holdings including a mill, a cheese factory, and a grocery store. The family sold their store to Tiny Zehnder in the 1950s, and he established the Cheese Haus during that decade according to a speaker recently hosted by the town's Lions Club.

The big mouse is enough of a landmark that it is a location at Waymarking.com (waymarking is similar to geocaching, except there is no physical cache involved).

But what about the cheese?

One of the store's claims to fame is its house-made chocolate cheeses. These taste a bit like a little-less-than-sweet fudge, and although I'm more interested in cheese that tastes like cheese, I imagine the chocolate cheeses might appeal to chocolate lovers looking for a little something different.

We opted instead for a few small bricks of Michigan-made cheeses like the Frankenmuth Sharp and a mild havarti cheese flecked with bits of peppadew. We also bought a tub of a cheese/cream cheese mix called Father Bolger's blend from St. John's, Michigan, named for a priest who originally developed the mix to make as Christmas gifts for family and friends.

If you absolutely need a boot-shaped beer glass, funny German hat, or postcards, you can find those sorts of souvenirs at the rear of the store.

But I like my cheesy souvenirs to be real, well, cheese!

There is a little patio area beside the store where you can enjoy your cheese snack on a warm day or gather the kids for the obligatory Cheese Haus Maus photo.

Kern's Sausages is just a little down the street from the Cheese Haus and is also a great place to shop for a little local flavor.

This family owned business recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, and a third generation of the Kern family continues to make and sell more than thirty house-made Bavarian-style sausages at the store.

Kern's has a small selection of grocery items and many imported German specialty items in addition to its extensive sausage selection.

Tim is a summer sausage fan, and we'd heard that Kern's house-made variety was quite tasty. We took some home with us and found it to be very good and nicely spicy.

It's also fun to browse around the Kern's website to see how they make their sausages and other German specialties like Springerle cookies or brat buns. Kern's also has a Facebook page, which is worth checking out for information about local events or for store coupons.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankenmuth

Photo Friday: Detroit waterfront

Detroit, Michigan, has a great waterfront.

I took these photos of the city's waterfront earlier this spring during a visit to Belle Isle, and I immediately thought of them as I read a recent rant from @bugsyrocker on Twitter about a clueless advertiser on Facebook that placed Detroit on Lake Michigan!

Bugsy immediately called the advertiser on their depiction of Detroit's waterfront as a beach-like paradise. His blog post about the ad, his complaint, and the advertiser's response placing Detroit on a lake 170 miles away from the city makes for interesting reading to say the least.

Anyway, for everyone's edification, these shots are of the Ambassador Bridge (which spans the Detroit River between Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, in Canada) and a skyline shot of Detroit featuring the RenCen building.

Check out Great Lakes maritime lore lives on at Detroit's Dossin Great Lakes Museum here at Midwest Guest for more about Detroit and its maritime history.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Enjoy a quick respite at Bavarian Inn Lodge

The Bavarian Inn Lodge in Frankenmuth, Michigan, looks like a great resort for families, and while we're more bed & breakfast or country inn types, we found the resort also worked nicely for a quick and quiet mid-week getaway during the off season.

We've visited Frankenmuth often for day trips over the years. The quaint German themed town is a little over an hour from home for us, and attractions like Bronner's massive year round Christmas store make it a fun trip for those seeking a little cool relief on hot summer days.

But as many times as I'd visited Bronner's and downtown Frankenmuth over the years, I'd never stayed there overnight.

We remedied that situation earlier this month when we found we could get out of town for a quick, quick trip and needed to go somewhere within an hour or two from home.

We arrived at the Bavarian Inn Lodge on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, approaching the massive motel along a lane leading through a covered bridge spanning the Cass River. The quiet approach almost made you forget you were going to a 7-acre resort that included a 360-room lodge, 5 indoor pools, a couple of restaurants and lounges, shops, and recreation options like an indoor mini golf course, outdoor tennis courts, tons of video games and other amusements.  

Arriving when we did meant we were able to snag a room overlooking the river, and the serene view made it possible to forget you were in a big resort campus with a fantasy Bavarian architectural theme.

Frankenmuth has an interesting history as a town settled by a small group of German families in the mid-1840s. I enjoyed the fact that the lodge honored the town's ties to those original settlers and their descendants by naming each room for early settlers, other families with deep roots in the community, or those who significantly contributed to the area's growth and development.

Our room was the Veitengruber room, named for Johann Michael and Anna Marie Veitengruber, and their six grown children, who originally arrived in Frankenmuth in 1846. The room's decor included plaques tracing the history of the family through eight generations, plus a gallery of Veitengruber family photos and records like a church confirmation document (in German) and an attendance award for another family member from the Frankenmuth village school district during the early 1900s.

Other lodge features we especially appreciated included a free and strong Wi-Fi signal we were both able to access at the same time in our room with no hassle, an in-room refrigerator, and the adult-only pool.

The adult-only pool alone makes the lodge worth considering for a future visit. I've been at resorts in the past where a single indoor pool served all of the guests and the staff there didn't enforce the late-night adult-only posted swim times, making it a special misery if you happened to book a poolside room. The Bavarian Inn's multiple pools spread throughout the complex make it pleasant for everyone.

We were a bit disappointed that the Lorelei Lounge wasn't open the night we were there, but we were still able to get a late snack and a beer in the cafeteria-style Ratskeller (although its location in the Family Fun Center with its sea of video games probably wouldn't make the Ratskeller our first choice on a busy summer night). Tim, a root beer fan, tried the Bavarian Inn's lodge's own branded root beer and liked it.

We also appreciated being able to take a short walk through the lodge to Oma's Restaurant for breakfast the next morning. If you go, make sure you try a side of the potato cheese dumplings with your meal.

 

No trip to Frankenmuth, of course, is complete without an all-you-can-eat chicken dinner or visit to Bronner's Christmas store. Read more about our Frankenmuth experiences in my earlier stories, Frankenmuth's Bavarian Inn serves up chicken, German beer and nostalgia in Michigan and Bronner's keeps the lights on for Santa in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

 

Want to learn more about Frankenmuth's history? Check out Frankenmuth (Image of America) by the Frankenmuth Historical Association.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Hotel Review
Frankenmuth

Frankenmuth's Bavarian Inn serves up chicken, German beer and nostalgia in Michigan

Taking a trek with the family to Frankenmuth, Michigan, for a family-style chicken dinner is something we did at least once every several years when I was growing up.

We recently picked a rainy weekday to for a nostalgic revisit to the area to check out the chicken and soak up a little of the Bavarian-style cutesy-kitsch that is so quintessentially Frankenmuth.

Michigan's "Little Bavaria" owes its identity to its beginnings as a community of German immigrants seeking good farm land and escape from political unrest in their home country in the mid-1840s.

The Zehnder family emigrated from Germany in 1846, and today, two branches of the family own restaurants that sit directly across the street from each other and specialize in similar all-you-can-eat, family-style chicken dinners.

Zehnder's of Frankenmuth lays claim to being "America's Largest Family Owned Restaurant" with ten dining rooms that can seat more than 1,500 diners. Zehnder's history dates back to an inn called the Exchange Hotel, built in 1856. William Zehnder purchased the Exchange, well known early on for its chicken dinners, in 1927. The Exchange had been vacant for four years when Zehnder acquired it, and he set about an ambitious remodeling to create a building resembling President George Washington's Mount Vernon home. He opened in 1928 and immediately began serving family-style chicken dinners again to hungry diners.

William (Tiny) Zehnder, Jr. and his wife Dorothy purchased a restaurant across the street from Zehnder's in 1950. The Michigan historical marker in front of this restaurant, now the Bavarian Inn, tells me that Theodore Fischer, a former bartender at the Exchange Hotel, established an inn at the site in 1888. Fischer's family reportedly began the tradition of all-you-can-eat family-style chicken dinners at the inn, something that Tiny and Dorothy Zehnder continued when they purchased Fischer's inn.

Tiny and Dorothy Zehnder visited Bavaria with their family in the late 1950s, which led them to remodel their restaurant into a fairy-tale Bavarian style.

The Bavarian Inn lays claim to being one of the ten largest restaurants in the United States, at least according to the historical marker out front. The marker goes on to say that a record of 5,470 meals were served on October 9, 1982, and over 20 million meals were served at the inn between its opening as Fischer's place in 1888 until 1988.

With both inns claiming titles as large and popular dining destinations, and the town itself usually listed among Michigan's top tourist attractions, scooting up there for dinner on a quiet weekday in spring meant we didn't have to wait in a long line for our meal or contend with a crowded and noisy dining room.

We opted for the more fantasy-themed Bavarian Inn for an all-we-could-eat late lunch/early dinner during our most recent visit.

The chicken is decent fried chicken, but the accompaniments really made the meal for us. My favorites included the chicken noodle soup (chock full of skinny little noodles), dressing, buttered German-style egg noodles, squash, and the crisp tart-yet-sweet cranberry relish. Homemade ice cream finished the meal, and I also loved the cranberry ice cream featured that month (a cranberry soft-serve with a hint of vanilla).

The menu also boasts an extensive German beer selection, and a draft Hofbräu was the perfect thing for me to have with my chicken dinner.

One of the biggest attractions at the Bavarian Inn for me is the fifty-foot-high Glockenspiel tower with a 35-bell carillon. The bell tower merits a full page at the Bavarian Inn's site, which tells about the history of the structure and significance of its tunes and figures.

The bells regularly chime the 5-bell Westminster chime every quarter hour, and I can remember seeing the extended glockenspiel program of other songs and a revolving set of German figurines depicting the not-so-cheery tale of the Pied Piper of Hameln. The piper, who managed to rid the German town of Hameln of the rats plaguing it during the 13th century, entranced the town's children with his tunes and led them away forever after the townspeople cheated him of the fee they agreed to pay for his rat removal (I said it was a less than cheery tale!).

During our most recent visit, even though we happened to be in the parking lot at the appointed hour for the four-times-a-day show, the figures remained behind closed doors. Perhaps they didn't want to get wet, as it was raining fairly hard at the time.

Still, we had a great time revisiting this favorite childhood destination of mine!

Want to learn more about Frankenmuth's history? Check out Frankenmuth (Image of America) by the Frankenmuth Historical Association.

Check out the story Bronner's keeps the lights on for Santa in Frankenmuth, Michigan here at Midwest Guest to learn how one Frankenmuth business keeps the spirit of Christmas alive year round.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankenmuth

Gwen Frostic Prints weathers winter closing and reopens this spring

Making the "Ben and Gwen run" was something I nearly always did when I visited Benzie County in Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula. I thought both the Ben Franklin store and Gwen Frostic Prints would be there forever, but time has a way of changing things.

Many of the Ben Franklin variety stores have slowly disappeared or been combined with another store like the grocery store/Ben Franklin store combo that now exists in Benzonia.

But as much as I loved rooting around in the bins at Ben's, I especially loved visiting Gwen's store, a rambling creation of her own featuring fieldstone, sod, and natural touches like gnarled pieces of wood as door handles.

Gwen Frostic celebrated Michigan's natural beauty by creating images of the animals, flowers, and other environmental elements, carving her creations in linoleum blocks and using them to create stationery, cards, calendars, prints, and a few non-paper products like tote bags and coffee mugs bearing Gwen's artwork. She published books celebrating nature in her own words and profusely illustrated by her linoleum-block prints.

Our cupboard boasts many Frostic mugs, I often wrap presents in Gwen's green-and-white gift wrap, and I've sent cards featuring Frostic images for holidays and other occasions over the years.

I loved the rustic store decor. I loved pausing at least a few moments to watch and listen to the clatter of the old Heidelberg printing presses from the store floor, which overlooked the print shop, or walking back to Gwen's nature library with its picture windows overlooking the river and property's wildlife refuge.

Officials at the Benzie County Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau report the business generated more interest and inquiries than any other attraction in the area. As many as 1,000 people might stop at Gwen Frostic's on a busy summer day, and the business employed 15 to 20 people, making it a vital part of the local economy.

Gwen Frostic passed away one day short of her 95th birthday in 2001, but her iconic store and artistry appeared to live on under owners.

So, it was more than shocking when I heard that Gwen Frostic's store closed in late October of 2009 because of financial difficulties.

The store's owners reportedly tied the business to a financing arrangement involving a restaurant and inn they also owned, an arrangement that eventually contributed to both businesses ending up in foreclosure.

The fact that Gwen Frostic was an astute business woman, and her business made her very rich, made the store's foreclosure especially unbelievable. Gwen, who received a bachelor's degree from Western Michigan University in 1929, left that school $13 million when she died--a bequest the university used to establish a new art school, scholarships, and multiple endowments to support various university projects and programs.

Bank officials readily acknowledged the importance of Gwen Frostic Prints to the local economy and said they hoped to find a way to keep it open.

The new year brought the news that the business owners managed to buy back the Gwen Frostic business from the bank and sold it to Greg and Kim Forshee of Benzonia. The Forshees bought the business, along with all of its copyrights and trademarks, and pledged to reopen it as soon as possible. The bank still owned the property, but the Forshees promised to keep the business in Benzie County whether or not they could open at the store Gwen built for it in 1955.

The building was always a big part of the appeal of a trip to Gwen's. The acreage contained the marshes, river, and woods where Frostic herself roamed and drew the plants and animals that became some of her most popular print subjects.

I've watched developments in this story for some time, and I finally appear to have good news to share here. Gwen Frostic Prints is now fulfilling mail and online orders, and the store is set to reopen May 22 at the beautiful River Road building.

Gwen lived an amazing life, and won honors like induction into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1986 and honorary doctorates from a handful of Michigan universities. But perhaps the best way to honor her life and legacy would be a continuation of the sharing of her art and love of Michigan's natural beauty.  

I wish the new owners the best of luck and hope they have a successful run with Gwen's business.

 

Read The Life and Wisdom of Gwen Frostic by Sheryl James to learn more about this talented, but often enigmatic, woman. The book is fairly short, being an extension of an article James originally wrote for the Detroit Free Press, and predates Gwen's death by a couple of years, but it's still a fascinating read for those who grew up visiting the store and anyone interested in learning about the woman who overcame many odds to create a multi-million dollar business and artful legacy.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankfort

Where I live: Community counts at Catching Fireflies

April McCrumb and the crew at Catching Fireflies are ushering in the sunny days of May by spreading a little sunshine and a taste of home to our hardworking military troops overseas.

May is National Military Appreciation Month, so April thought it was the perfect time to support our troops by working with the anysoldier.com website.

"I've sent out a few personal packages through this organization a couple years ago and found it to be very rewarding," wrote April, answering a few questions I emailed her about her latest community service project.

April says that anyone could send packages through the anysoldier.com website, but she hopes that organizing a collection as a group project encourages more participation by making it easy to contribute and see the items sent to the soldiers.

April plans to "adopt" a number troops by teaming up with customers at her Berkley and Rochester stores in metro Detroit to collect non-perishable snacks, hygiene items, and fun items like magazines and DVDs to send to troops in hopes of making their lives just a little more comfortable.

As always with April's projects, there is a creative component with this latest community service effort. Regular Midwest Guest readers may remember her successful Valentine's Day project this year where Catching Fireflies' customers created handmade cards to send to area seniors living in assisted living facilities. April again encourages crafty types to create handmade cards to include with donated supplies going to the troops, and she created a special downloadable patriotic coloring sheet so kids can create a colorful "Thank You" to send along with the packages as well.

"We'll be accepting donations the whole month of May. I'd like to help out a dozen or more troops if we can," says April, who intends to post updates about the project and the troops receiving the packages on the Catching Fireflies blog.

This project is the latest in a string of community service projects organized by April and her Catching Fireflies team. They recently raised over $400 to benefit the Rainbow Connection (a Michigan organization working to grant wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses) and plan to collect school supplies later this summer for the Judson Center (a Royal Oak, Michigan, non-profit human and family service agency).

Catching Fireflies specializes in unique gifts, the work of independent artists, and promoting eco values like creative reuse and recycling, so April's recent partnership with Cass Community Social Services to sell mud mats created from discarded tires found in Detroit is a natural fit with those values. April will offer the mats, created by Detroiters in need of employment, at her stores with 100 percent of those sales returning to CCSS to help fund their food, homeless, medical, mental health, vocational, and youth services.

"It's our goal to be involved in at least one large charitable cause a quarter," says April.

Visit Catching Fireflies in Berkley (3117 W. 12 Mile) or downtown Rochester (203 East University).

 

Note: "Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Point Betsie Lighthouse wins Michigan Governor's Award

I've always loved Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse, and I love the fact that civic activists and lighthouse lovers banded together in recent years to give the iconic site some tender loving care in the form of an ambitious restoration. So, it pleased me to see the State of Michigan give this iconic location a little love when Governor Jennifer Grandholm recently named it winner of a 2010 Governor's Award for Historic Preservation.

The red-roofed lighthouse presents a striking contrast to the long stretch of remote Lake Michigan beach and spacious skies uncluttered by surrounding development. You can see what it looked like a decade ago, and for many of the years we visited the site, in the above photo.

We discovered some changes taking place at Point Betsie as we visited the site about five years ago, and I snapped a batch of photos of the multi-year restoration then in progress.

We never saw the lighthouse open to the public until that particular visit, and were thrilled to finally be able to climb the tower and see the improvements up close. The Friends also plan to continue, and possibly extend, lighthouse summer and autumn visiting hours.

Benzie County and the Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse worked to restore the lighthouse exterior to look as it did at the end of World War II, and restored the exterior and interior of the fog signal building to its 1921 appearance.

Even with much of the exterior restoration of the lighthouse complete, work continues to raise money for projects like rehabilitating the lighthouse's interior, upgrading exhibits about the lighthouse's history and dune-based ecology, installing a lift for visitors needing assistance to access the exhibition area, improving parking at the site, replacing the temporary gift shop with a permanent on-site location, and improving erosion control at the site.

The project received a big boost last year in the form of a $225,000 grant from the National Park Service's Save America's Treasures program and also benefited from Michigan Lighthouse Assistance Program grants.

The State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) established the annual preservation awards in 2003 to recognize the value of teamwork to preserve historic treasures that reflect Michigan's unique character and document the story of the state's history.

The awards also spotlight the positive economic impact represented by the investments involved in those projects. Projects recognized this year in addition to Point Betsie Lighthouse include rehabilitation of the Fort Shelby Hotel and the Argonaut Building in Detroit, rehabilitation of the Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant, rehabilitation of Witherbee's Market in Flint, and a job re-training program in Kalamazoo that collectively represent a $248 million investment.

This last photo shows a more recent wintertime view of the lighthouse exterior where you can see the newly-restored color scheme with the black-capped tower, green accent trim, and the restored stonework along the entry stairs.

I'm anxious to return and see the progress with the interior work, and I hope the changes continue to honor the site's original character, as they have so far, so I can continue to enjoy visiting one of my favorite Great Lakes lights and beaches.

 

Check out my previous story about Point Betsie Lighthouse and its 150th anniversary - Happy Birthday, Betsie!

 

Want to learn even more about the lighthouse and its history? Pick up the book Point Betsie: Lightkeeping and Lifesaving on Northeastern Lake Michigan by Jonathan P. Hawley. Author Hawley is president of the Friends of Point Betsie Lighthouse, with his book drawing from many primary sources and including lots of historic photos.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Frankfort

The Biggest Week in American Birding kicks off this weekend with International Migratory Bird Day on Saturday, May 8 and a full schedule of events at northwestern Ohio's premiere warbler watching sites along Lake Erie that include the popular boardwalk trail in Magee Marsh.

Check out my previous stories, Lake Erie is for the birds: Ohio's Magee Marsh and Lake Erie is for the birds: Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge to see what draws scores of birders and nature photographers to this marshland area along the lake, particularly during peak times for spring and autumn bird migrations.

Today, I'm posting a few more photos of Magee Marsh that I didn't post with my original story about that nature area.

Tim enjoyed visiting Magee Marsh and shooting a few photos along the boardwalk trail.

I climbed up onto one of the observation towers along the trail

We also spotted the nearby Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant tower in the distance as we drove along the Magee Marsh causeway

You don't even have to be a birder or a photographer to fully enjoy Magee Marsh

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Ohio's Magee Marsh is for the birds

The Biggest Week in American Birding kicks off this weekend with International Migratory Bird Day on Saturday, May 8 and a full schedule of events at northwestern Ohio's premiere warbler watching sites along Lake Erie that include the popular boardwalk trail in Magee Marsh.

Check out my previous stories, Lake Erie is for the birds: Ohio's Magee Marsh and Lake Erie is for the birds: Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge to see what draws scores of birders and nature photographers to this marshland area along the lake, particularly during peak times for spring and autumn bird migrations.

Today, I'm posting a few more photos of Magee Marsh that I didn't post with my original story about that nature area.

Tim enjoyed visiting Magee Marsh and shooting a few photos along the boardwalk trail.

I climbed up onto one of the observation towers along the trail

We also spotted the nearby Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant tower in the distance as we drove along the Magee Marsh causeway

You don't even have to be a birder or a photographer to fully enjoy Magee Marsh

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved