River Channel Below Leland Dam
Shipwreck Steam Boiler
Denuded Bluff
Full Medical for Kayakers?
Cathead Point with Grand Traverse Point on the Far Horizon
Grand Traverse Point Lighthouse & Light Tower
Veni, Vidi, Rocki
Ma & Pa Cornstalk, Volunteers in Case of a State Government Shutdown
Bringing Back Memories
Vintage Toys
Looking Over the Fog Horn Building Toward Cathead Point on the Horizon from the Lighthouse
August 26, 2007 - The single lane boat ramp in Leland presents a busy choreography of forced patience upon launching and retrieving motorboaters. Thankfully, the opposite side of the dock allows a leisurely but purposeful launch of the yak making sure equipment is distributed evenly between hatches, safety gear is all in its accustomed place, climb off of the low dock into the yak, and stretch the sprayskirt over the coming ..., unsnap the sprayskirt, climb out onto the dock, pop a hatch, fish around for the paddle leash, the monocular and some granola bars. Settle back into the yak, snap the sprayskirt around - the rudder stay bungie is still on! I'm becoming skilled, if at nothing else, in one particular paddle stroke: twisting around and popping the rudder stay with the paddle. The BCU wardens will have me in my kayak doing greenland rolls on a spit over a campfire one day. "Invert! Come on, man, put more barbecue sauce in that stroke!"
Waves were 1 to 1 1/2 foot and medium steepness. The shore to the north has a few moderately high bluffs. Some bluffs have all their tree cover remaining. Several stewardly shoreline owners have tried to shore up their bare eroding bluffs with elaborate netting and staking and forego the placement of long stairways, but they seem uniformly to have trouble getting anything to grow. Other shoreline owners who pine for a lake view remove too many trees, or in one instance, remove every tree along hundreds of feet of bluff. Shallow regular erosion channels now run down the bluff face, and inevitably the channels are deepening and moving landward inch by inch foot by foot every year until the angle of the bluff is reduced to a degree it can support grass, then brush, and again trees.
The steam boiler from an unknown shipwreck breaks above water near shore about 800 yards south of Peterson Park, a small lakeshore township park a mile north and west of Northport off the corner of Peterson Park Rd. and Foxview Dr. (Wagbo Rd.). Peterson Park is not convenient for launching a kayak because it sits up on a bluff and requires carrying a kayak down and up, but it is a nice place to take a break from paddling and do some rock hunting or use one of their picnic barbecue pits. The park is a little hard to find from the water, but a small observation deck can be seen atop the bluff with no obvious sign of an attached house.
The place to launch a kayak is Christmas Cove Park, a much smaller township park which is not identified on most maps at the end of Christmas Cove Rd., a mile north of Peterson Park. The parking lot is below the bluff and just behind the beach allowing ready access. Picnic tables on the beach and a restroom are the only amenities at this tiny park. After paddling as far as Cathead Point, I returned to this park for a break and made plans to launch from here in the future to cover Cathead Bay up to the Grand Traverse Point Lighthouse because Leelanau State Park does not have convenient kayak launching for day paddlers, although they do have select campsites which are within reach of the water.
Trip Report #2
September 22, 2007 - A brisk southeast wind is blowing off the shore, a good direction from which to paddle Cathead Bay in a protected fashion. The water at Christmas Cove Park is rippled but flat. Rounding Cathead Point presents the only tough spot heading straight into the wind and a moderate fetch of waves.
It is very early in the morning just after sunrise when I pull into Christmas Cove Park. I toted the kayak and gear bag to the water's edge and returned to don wetsuit and collect final items. A couple in a car arrived and pulled up nearby. The elderly man driving got out, opened the trunk, and began pulling on a pair of hip waders. That done, he looked at me and asked mysteriously and open-endedly, "Are you looking for something?" "Nooo," I drooled out, "Are you going fishing," I foolishly inquired despite the plain improbability of shorecasting from such a place. "The wife and I make jewelry out of petoskey stones," he said as he lifted a five gallon bucket out of the trunk. It finally struck me I'm standing in a wetsuit and he thinks I have come to clean up on stones before he can reach them. He looked relieved when I point out my unseen kayak below the small drop to the beach.
I imagine this late in the year the pickings are thin after months of concentrated rock hounding along these sparse public parks. Even tho' the shoreline is entirely publicly accessible, there are severe limits on how far several pounds of rocks can be carried in a bucket in hand by the healthiest of us. In the interest of economic development among the local jewelry trade, folk artists might consider investing in a kayak perhaps as a co-operative venture between several artists. You have left the best, most secluded places to rock hunt to me, and my possession limit is six stones; it's catch 'n release after six. There is indeed a remote shallow shoal covered with petoskey stones whose location shall remain a secret but to paddlers. [UPDATE: The "secret" petoskey stone shoal would have been a secret if the latest edition of a widely known Michigan map book did not denote with a symbol and the words "Petoskey Stones" one, and only one, location along the entire shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron: the exact same "secret" shoal. An investigative subcommittee in Lansing should be convened and issue subpoenas to determine who divulged this state secret.]Grand Traverse Point was reached by 11am. Rounding the point to look down the bay, the waves grew sharp entering the brisk wind. Back on the lee side of the point, a trail comes down to the rock strewn shore from the fog horn building and is a convenient place to pull the kayak out. The fog horn building, which use to double as the gift shop, has been smartly filled out with more historical displays. The gift shop has moved into the garage on the other side of the lighthouse. There are a few snack food and granola bar offerings available in the gift shop as well as books, clothing, and ornaments. Loyal volunteers from the Grand Traverse Lighthouse Foundation performed yeoman's duties learning to run the gift shop and perform other details as the state park prepared to face in a few days the looming threat of a state government shutdown which would result in no state park staff being able to report to work. The 1858 lighthouse, which has been carefully restored to the 1920s and 1930s era, opened for self-guided tours at noon for a small fee. The amount of vintage furniture, utensils, and accoutrements is impressive and provides an authentic and detailed display of the lighthouse keeper's daily family life and duties. The nagging question for my next visit tho': Is the oak clock in the dining room 100 years old or 200 years old?
The kitchen stove brought back memories for me of regularly tending just such a stove during winters in a house in the Keweenaw. It consisted of filling the firebox with tinder and coal carried up from the basement, opening the air vents on the side, opening the exhaust valve in back of the burner plats, lighting the fire, closing the air vents when the fire got good and going, closing the exhaust valve to circulate hot exhaust around the oven box, and leaving the oven door open to warm the chilly kitchen up into the center of social activity in the house. As good a cook stove as any made today; it just took longer to get up to heat. It also brought back not so fond memories of cleaning the dirty thing, removing and brushing soot off all the top plates, twisting open the firebox grates to drop ash into the ashbox, breathing wafting ash, and scraping soot out from under the oven door. Perhaps shockingly, these memories are from the late 1990s.I refilled a water bottle from a fountain near the parking lot and loaded a few things from the gift shop into the kayak and departed. The wind eased a bit while following the bay. I headed out across toward Cathead Point.