Travel news from the sources

Summer packages in Traverse City, Michigan

Through September 10, 2009, Traverse City, Michigan, is offering visitors a summer accommodations package. Room rates start at $52.50 per person per night (midweek plus tax, based on double occupancy).

More than 25 hotels, motels and resorts are participating in this offer, which includes free play at local casinos and over 40 other discounts on everything from dining, golf and spa services to boat rentals, wine purchases, hot air balloon flights and tall ship sailings.

With its miles of sand beaches, clear bays and lakes, championship golf courses and other outdoor recreation opportunities, the Traverse City area has long been a favorite Midwest summer destination. More recently, it has attracted national attention for its rich artistic and cultural offerings, unique shopping, fine dining and award-winning wine scene.

For detailed information about Traverse City’s Sizzling Summer Specials, visit Traverse City.

 

Historic Michigan lighthouse shines again

By Mike Norton for Michigan Tourism

GLEN ARBOR, Michigan – For more than a century the elegant lighthouse on South Manitou Island guided ships past the treacherous sandbars of Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes. Decommissioned in 1958, it spent the next 50 years as a mute and lightless memorial to the heyday of Great Lakes sailing ships.

South Manitou Island Light

But the historic lighthouse is about to enter into a second career. On May 30, its lamp will be relit to shine once again across the storied Manitou Passage. 

 

“Thanks to our generous supporters, the South Manitou light will shine on the horizon from May through October,” said Dusty Schultz, superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which administers the lighthouse and the island where it stands.

 

One of the most scenic lighthouses in the country, the 104-foot lighthouse was established in 1839 to mark the crescent-shaped bay at South Manitou, the only natural harbor along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan. It was strategically located on the heavily trafficked Manitou Passage, which was used by cost-conscious skippers on the 300-mile eastern route from Chicago to Mackinac Island. Schooners took refuge here during storms, and steamers stopped to take on wood for their boilers. The current tower dates from 1871.