You might imagine my surprise when I spotted this
sign on a beach near Empire, Michigan, advising visitors to remain clothed.
A stretch of beach about one mile north of Esch Road
near Otter Creek in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore is relatively quiet
and undeveloped, apparently making it popular as a sort of “unofficial nude
beach”.
Much as Empire is one of those quintessential
northern Michigan small towns, Joe’s is one of those quintessential small-town
joints where you immediately feel at home the moment you walk into the door and
belly up to the bar. And people have been making themselves at home at Joe’s
for about 70 years!
We’ve loved going to Joe’s for years. I remember it
being one of the first places Tim and I went out to eat when we started going
“up North” years ago.
It’s a great place to stop for a cold beer on a hot
summer day, and it’s an equally great place to go for a hot bowl of soup on a
cold winter night.
When I finally conquered the Sleeping Bear Dune
Climb a few years ago, the first place I went after coming back down from the
top of the dune was Joe’s—to enjoy what I considered to be a well-earned beer
and cheeseburger.
Summer brings a lot more tourists and family groups
out to Joe’s. The pace slows down during the cold winter months when you might
only have to share the place with a regular or two who wander into the bar to
pluck their personal mugs from a rack on the back wall to help themselves to
coffee. Our most recent trip to Joe’s was during the winter, when we had the
place to ourselves, and I shot these photos.
Joe’s Friendly serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
but visitors may best know the place for its burgers. Joe’s burgers come from
meat freshly ground in their own butcher shop each day, and the humble patties earned
coverage in the New York Times, the Flint Journal, the Lansing State Journal,
Traverse City Record-Eagle, Traverse Magazine, the Detroit Free Press, and the
local weekly, the Leelanau Enterprise.
Check out the appetizer menu for a real northern
specialty, fried smelt with tartar sauce. Order these little fried fish to
share with your table mates. Smelt are so small, they aren’t boned before
cooking, so be sure to eat them quickly as bones harden as the fish cools.
If you want to have a more swanky dining experience,
try Joe’s version of “surf and turf”, a burger with grilled onion accompanied
by a half pound of fried smelt.
Other menu favorites of mine include: grilled cheese
sandwiches (one of my pet peeves are restaurants that have grilled cheese only
on their kids’ menus and don’t allow adults to order them), corn-meal dusted
lake perch or walleye, whitefish cooked campfire style (steamed in tin foil
after a quick marking on the charbroiler), or tater tots as a side dish with
your meal.
Take a little bit of Joe’s home with you by
purchasing a T-shirt, sweatshirt, or a jug of Joe’s own draft root beer at the
bar before you leave.
I can’t wait for my next trip north because writing
this definitely makes me hungry for to visit Joe’s Friendly for a burger or
some fried smelt!
We love visiting the Village of Empire, Michigan,
not only because it is right in the middle of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National
Lakeshore area and home to the national park’s headquarters and visitor center,
but also because it is just one of those cool little northern Michigan small
towns.
The wide Front Street running through the village
looks pretty serene in this wintertime view, when about 400 year-round
residents pretty much have the place to themselves, but come summer, this
village about 25 miles west of Traverse City teems with tourists. Visitors come
for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Empire events like the
annual Dunegrass Festival in summer, which has a full bill of folk and bluegrass
music plus displays by local artisans.
I hope to get up to Empire during mid-May one of
these years to attend the Asparagus Fest. The festival, now in its seventh
year, features asparagus, plenty of parties, music, a parade, asparagus theme
costumes, asparagus eats at restaurants and stores around town, recipe
contests, and cook-offs. One area brewery even offered asparagus beer last
year!
Empire also has a great free, public park on the
shore of Lake Michigan. The Lake Michigan Beach Park offers an excellent view
of the Empire Bluff, which you can see in these summer and winter views. The
northwest winds and wide sand beach make it a great place for kite-flying in
the spring, while summertime visitors like swimming in the big lake, crossing
the parking lot to swim in the smaller and warmer South Bar Lake at the park,
or picnicking with friends and family.
Park visitors can also learn about Empire’s history
and the importance of the logging industry in the village’s early development
by checking out a state historical marker at the former site of the Empire Lumber
Company. Plus, geocachers can log another find at this site.
Settlers first came to Empire in the mid-1850s. The
community supposedly took its name from a schooner that went aground nearby in
1865, and the vessel served as a village school that winter.
Lumbering came to Empire in a big way in 1887 when
the T. Wilce Company established the Empire Lumber Company to provide hardwood
for a Wilce-owned flooring business in Chicago. The lumber company quickly
became one of the largest hardwood mills in Michigan, making Empire a lumbering
boom town in the 1890s and early 1900s.
The village population soared to 1,000 by 1900. The
last Empire lumber mill burned down by 1917, spelling the end of the village’s busy
lumbering era.
In 1972, the local historians established the Empire
Heritage Group to preserve the area’s past. A museum complex that includes a
main building, old schoolhouse, fire house and a barn is open during the summer
and early autumn.
I always loved the vintage sign that stood in front of a
McDonald’s in Madison Heights, Michigan, until that restaurant modernized their
signage and donated the old sign to The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn,
Michigan.
It turns out that the Dearborn Heights sign is a retro
reproduction in front of a McDonald’s that bills itself as the “world famous
50s McDonalds”. A closer look at the sign shows it marked as a “50s” restaurant
in the spot where the vintage sign at The Henry Ford features the 15-cent
burger price.
The restaurant’s 1950s theme is particularly well-suited to
its location on Telegraph Road, a major metro Detroit cruising route throughout
the years that still draws classic car owners for the annual Telegraph Tomorrow
Car Cruise each summer. The 50s McDonald’s is popular among classic car owners
who show up for classic car nights at the restaurant.
Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is one of
my favorite destinations.
We've visited the park many times, in several different
seasons, and we make it a point to try stopping first at the park's Phillip A.
Hart Visitor Center every time we're in the area.
The Sleeping Bear Dunes owe their name, if you can believe a
popular Native American legend, to the sad story two bear cubs that died trying
to escape a forest fire. The cubs and their mother attempted swimming to safety
as a forest fire drove them from their northern Wisconsin home. The mother made
it across Lake Michigan, while the cubs tired and drowned just short of safety
on shore in northwestern Michigan. Today, a large sand dune represents the
mother who climbed atop a bluff in Michigan hoping to see her cubs make it to
shore, while two islands represent the cubs where they drowned just short of
shore.
Visitors can learn about the Sleeping Bear legend, ongoing
efforts to protect the area, and check out a several exhibits about the
geology, ecology, and history of the park at the visitor center.
You can find a lot of information about the area, its
attractions, and seasonal events with the Sleeping Bear Dunes online visitor
guide, but visiting the center is even better because you can pick up detailed
hiking trail maps, pick up park brochures and booklets, and talk to park
rangers to ask specific questions. The visitor center is also one of the best
places to purchase your park pass (the $10 for a week-long pass or $20 for an
annual pass goes toward park maintenance and improvement) or hit the restrooms
before getting out to enjoy the park.
One of my favorite features of the center is the gift store.
I've purchased books, caps, T-shirts, scrapbook stickers, and other gifts at
the visitor center over the years. You might be able to find a few of the items
elsewhere, but I like buying them at the visitor center because that money also
goes to support the park.
I love making the 17-mile scenic drive up M-37 along the Old
Mission Peninsula through the cherry orchards and vineyards and away from busy
Traverse City, Michigan, to see the lighthouse picturesquely perched at the
peninsula’s tip as it juts out into Grand Traverse Bay.
Signs at the site denoting the light’s latitudinal location
are one of a handful of locations in Michigan similarly marked and are a good
place to stage one of those quintessentially cheesy tourist shots for your
vacation photo album.
The Old Mission Point Lighthouse is also notable because it
is a twin to the long-gone Mama Juda Lighthouse that guided mariners through a
portion of the Detroit River at the north end of Grosse Ile and near the
Canadian shoreline near the city of Detroit. The Mama Juda light sat on a 30-acre
island, with both the island and the lighthouse named for an American Indian
woman who set up a fishing camp in the area each season. The Mama Juda lighthouse,
built in 1849 and rebuilt in 1866, disappeared by the mid-1900s. High water
washed away the lighthouse in 1950, and water washed away the entire island by
1960.
Old Mission Point Lighthouse remained in active service
until 1933.
The State of Michigan assumed ownership of the lighthouse by
the 1940s and established the site as a new park after World War II. Peninsula
Township assumed responsibility and ownership of the park and buildings that
included the lighthouse, the Hesler log cabin, and several other outbuildings
like storage sheds, a garage, and a brick pump house in 1948.
Public visiting hours for the Old Mission Point Lighthouse
run from May through October, when visitors can view an on-site museum, check
out displays that provide a look at turn-of-the-twentieth-century lighthouse
life, and climb up into the empty tower to check out the view over Lake
Michigan.
Visitors with the time and desire to more fully immerse
themselves into the Old Mission Lighthouse experience can apply to be a
volunteer light keeper through a new program that duplicates a similar popular
program at the nearby Grand Traverse Lighthouse. Volunteer keepers pay $800 to
live at Old Mission Point Lighthouse for a month and perform duties like
greeting visitors, giving guided tours of the lighthouse and tower, and performing
general cleaning and maintenance tasks. Money generated by the volunteer light
keeper program and day admission fees help fund lighthouse expenses and go
towards the goal of making the park and lighthouse self-supporting.
The Cherry Bowl Drive-In at Honor in northern Michigan
represents a real blast from the past. The drive-in, now celebrating 56 years
in operation, hosts family-friendly films in a 1950s-style atmosphere.
I have fond memories of going to our local drive-in theater
as a kid. I loved playing in the theater’s playground near the big screen and
heading up to the concession stand for hot dogs and popcorn, often after the
corny slides advertising the theater’s eats appeared on the screen between
flicks.
Today, there are only a handful of drive-in theaters in many
Midwest states.
Some present-day drive-in theaters represent off-season uses
for venues like the Compuware Arena in Plymouth, Michigan, (where we watch the Plymouth Whalers of the
Ontario Hockey League play). Compuware uses their large parking lot as a
drive-in with temporary screens during months when the lot isn’t used for
hockey game parking.
The Cherry Bowl, opened in 1953, is one of fewer than a
dozen dedicated drive-in theaters in Michigan. The theater’s Web site assures
families that all movies it plays are no stronger than a PG-13 rating, do not
glorify teen drinking or drug use, and that it offers a program each night of
operation that includes a double feature with vintage intermission films and
cartoons. And yes, there is a playground and a 1950s-style mini golf course to
amuse the kids before the movies start.
The Cherry Bowl lies dormant for the winter right now, but
come May, the theater opens for yet another nostalgic-rich season at the
movies.
Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and
coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.
We love visiting lighthouses and learning about their
history, but visiting the little log Hesler home adjacent to the Old Mission
Point Lighthouse north of Traverse City, Michigan, offers a unique opportunity to
learn about the earliest pioneers in the region.
Joseph and Mary Hesler settled along the eastern shore of
the Old Mission Peninsula in the mid-1850s, clearing the land of dense forest
and building a simple log cabin with the timber they harvested.
The snug little cabin featured outside walls joined with
modified dove-tailed joints and served as shelter for the couple until they
sold it in 1866.
Joseph, a Canadian, and Mary, born in Ireland, were typical
of the Irish, English, Canadian, and Scottish immigrants living and farming in
the Old Mission Peninsula region by the 1860s. Their cabin was also typical of
the sort of homes built in the region during that era.
I was unable to discover what happened to the Heslers after
they moved from their little log home, but the cabin served as a private home,
shelter for migrant workers coming to the area to pick fruit like northern
Michigan’s famous cherry crops, as a school, and, intriguingly enough, as a
shelter for a bull!
By the early 1990s, the little cabin was empty and slated
for demolition until area residents spent several years rallying to save,
restore, and move the home to a site 14 miles to the north and next to the Old
Mission Point Lighthouse.
In 2001, the State of Michigan erected an historical marker
telling the story of the home, which is a rare surviving example of the log
homes from the early settlement of Old Mission Peninsula. Visitors can peek in
the cabin’s windows or, in the warmer tourist season, look through a glass
partition and listen to a recorded history of the cabin, to see how northern
Michigan’s earliest pioneers lived.
The wooded area next to the lighthouse is the perfect site
for the Hesler home, giving visitors a real sense of how the home might have
looked tucked into the northern Michigan forest.
Families and avid geocachers might also enjoy searching for
a couple easy caches at the park (one physical cache box and one virtual cache),
both of which are still active as I write this story.
Be sure to come back to Midwest Guest later this month to
learn more about the Old Mission Point Lighthouse.
Here are a few Midwest stories I’ve enjoyed reading this
past month:
Those of you observing Lent may still be savoring the idea
of that last taste of sweets until Easter. Join Becks Davis of Detroit Moxie as
she travels to Hamtramck, Michigan, for the traditional Polish Paczki on Fat
Tuesday.
Sarah went Wandering Off and found this cool art
installation on the University of Kansas campus. What do you think? Bewitching,
bewildering, or bedazzling?
I love visiting those funky and largely unknown museums that
are unique to a particular city or destination. Check out this great list of
unusual and unexpected museums in Cleveland, Ohio, at What Locals Like About
Cleveland Plus—a list that includes Lake View Cemetery, which Midwest Guest
readers may remember reading about here.
Amy of A Closer Look at Flyover Land invites readers to join
her for a perfectly civilized afternoon in St. Paul, Minnesota with an up-close
look at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Aimée takes readers of the Indiana Insider Blog on a tour of
Bloomington, Indiana. Check out Indiana University, do a little shopping, and
have a great meal to round out your day in Bloomington.
Kath takes Great Lakes Gazette readers on a tour of
Marquette, Michigan. See what makes this Upper Peninsula city a Distinctive
Destination, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Northern
Michigan University, Lake Superior shoreline, cool architecture—no wonder Marquette
came in first among online voters among the Dozen Distinctive Destinations for
2010.
Check out these ornate Lombard Lamps in Chicago, Illinois,
on the Chicago Architecture Blog. The massive lamps are familiar to residents
of Hamburg, Germany, where similar lamps have lined the famous Lombard Bridge
in that city since 1869.
Regular readers of Midwest Guest know that I have a special
interest in unique bridges, so I have to include this story by Linda at Travels
with Children about North Dakota’s Fairview Lift Bridge.
Christopher of the Cleveland Area History blog began
compiling a list of what he judges as the 100 most important Cleveland, Ohio, Landmarks
and asks readers to help complete the list. There are some great places on this
list, including Lake View Cemetery’s Wade Chapel (thanks for linking to my
story about the chapel, Christopher). I can’t wait to get back to Cleveland to
explore some of the places on this list.
Little did Rosa Parks know that when she boarded city bus
2857 in Montgomery, Alabama, one December day in 1955 that it was the beginning
of a ride that would change history, help strike down restrictive segregation
laws in the South, and advance the cause of civil rights in the United States.
The original bus, found rotting away in an Alabama field,
now sits proudly restored at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.
I pretty much travel on my own time and my own dime. I haven't had to worry about it yet, but if I should receive a complimentary product, service, or accommodations as a result of my blogging activities, I will disclose that at the time I write about it.
Midwest Guest is a member of an affiliates program in association with Amazon. If you click through the links to Amazon from here and purchase something at Amazon.com, I receive a small commission on the items.
