After winter’s long sleep, the beauty of this wonderful place is at its fresh peak. The hills and valleys are misted in new greenery, the endless beaches are coming alive with warmth, and the air is filled with the scent of millions of flowering cherry trees.

A Traverse City spring has a gentler, more sensuous feel than most people associate with the “Up North” experience. It’s a time of moist warm mornings, golden afternoons and cool, lingering evenings; the summer crowds and heat haven’t arrived yet, and everyone seems to be wearing a mellow glow.

Even the travelers who find their way here in springtime are a different breed. They’re looking for something special -- a quiet retreat from the humdrum, a village shopping adventure, or a tasting tour of the beautiful wine country of the Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas. (And it doesn’t hurt that in spring the enchantment of Traverse City is available at very reasonable prices.) 

Between now and May 17, the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau is offering a special "Traverse City Escape" package that combines special rates at participating hotels and resorts with great deals at some of the area’s best restaurants and special discounts on shopping, spa services, movies, wine tastings and other entertainment. 

Traverse City is an increasingly famous wine-producing region, with over 30 wineries and tasting rooms offering tours and tastings of their award-winning vintages, and its many restaurants are creating a national reputation for their fresh, innovative regional cuisine. (Bon Appetit has even named us one of America’s Top Five Foodie towns!) Spring is an excellent time to enjoy it for yourself -- before everybody else arrives. 

The region enjoys more than 150 inland lakes and hundreds of miles of Lake Michigan shoreline -- including the majestic Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, voted “Most Beautiful Place in America” last fall by viewers of Good Morning America . And although the water’s still a little chilly for swimming, you’d be surprised how many good sunbathing days there can be in a Traverse City spring! 

Surrounding Traverse City are deep, fragrant forests crisscrossed with trails for hikers, horseback riders and cyclists, and more than 20 golf courses with some of the most striking configurations ever designed. This is Michigan’s “Golf Coast,” an area Golf Digest named #12 on its list of the World’s Top 50 Golf Destinations. 

On a single morning, you could enjoy one of the best meals you’ve ever had, amble through the shops and stores of a friendly, tree-shaded village like Suttons Bay or Elk Rapids, or cast your line into one of America’s most famous trout streams. You could paddle the shores of a forest lake, play a round of championship golf, or take a drive through the most gorgeous display of spring wildflowers you’ll see anywhere.

Row, row your boat, canoe, raft or kayak--gently or otherwise--up the streams, rivers inland and Great lakes for a Pure Michigan paddling adventure. With 11,000 inland

Newaygo Hosts National Championships

This year the winding waters of the Muskegon River will welcome paddlers age 5 and up for the annual United States Canoe Association’s National Canoe & Kayak Championships in Newaygo, August 9-14. The event attracts more than 500 paddlers from 30 states and Canadian provinces. There are sprint races and a 16- to 18-mile marathon that begins with a 6-mile circumnavigation of Croton Pond followed by a running portage around the 101-year old Croton Dam, launching into the Muskegon River below, and paddling 12 miles downstream to Henning Park at Newaygo.

The city of Newaygo is gearing up a huge volunteer effort to welcome participants and visitors to the event, which began in 1968; this is the fifth time Michigan has hosted the annual championship. Newaygo is located northeast of Muskegon, and sits on the edge of the Manistee National Forest. There are several options for camping, cottage rentals, resorts and motels. For all types of water sports, Newaygo County has 234 lakes and 356 miles of rivers. Take advantage of local canoe and kayak rentals, or fish for bass, trout, walleye and pike. The Muskegon River is ranked among the top 20 by Field & Stream magazine for fishing, and in the top 12 in National Geographic for recreation.

Water Trails

Michigan offers several water trails for coastline kayak and canoe trips. The Tip of the Thumb Heritage Water Trails is along Michigan’s Lake Huron’s shoreline.   The Shiawassee River Heritage Water Trail begins in Holly for a seven mile paddling trip. The Bangor/South Haven Heritage Water Trail is a canoe and kayak trail encompassing 21 miles of the South Branch of the Black River between the cities of Bangor and South Haven. Not all of the water trail is completed as yet, so be sure to call ahead for information. 

Located in the Upper Peninsula, the Hiawatha Water Trail runs 120 miles from Big Bay to Grand Marais with scenic paddling of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and more.  The Keweenaw Water Trail can be covered by an average paddler in six to eight days with a mixture of uninhabited wilderness areas, intermittent parks and nature preserves and sheltered harbors.  

More Canoe Adventures

Enjoy northern Michigan canoeing on the Platte River where you can choose the Lower Platte for a two-hour easy going trip, or the Upper Platte for a fast paddle best suited for experienced canoe and kayakers. Canoe rentals are available three miles away in Honor. Check out the Platte River State Forest Campground where there are 26 sites for tent and small trailers, available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Eleven miles to the West is Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore with over 30 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and spectacular sand dunes.

You are never more than an hour's drive from one of Michigan’s 98 state parks or recreation areas where canoeing, kayaking and fishing are favorite activities for families. Admission to the parks and boat launches requires the new Recreation Passport, which is $10 annually for residents, $8 per day or $29 annually for non-residents. The fee goes to preserve and protect local parks, trails and historic and cultural sites in state parks. 

There are also several Huron-Clinton Metroparks in Southeast Michigan that offer canoeing and kayaking for the entire family. Visitors can rent canoes or kayaks and leisurely wind around a lake or river. 

From the January/February 2008 issue of

Paddling in winter becomes a process of rediscovering Michigan’s rivers and the landscape — and of discovering again the sensuous pleasures of gliding through clear water in a canoe.

If you love rivers, you find reasons to be near them. Winter is a good enough reason. In winter, even rivers you have known all your life seem new. Get in a canoe and float downstream past the first bend and for all you know you could be riding water on another continent. Just what the doctor ordered for seasonal affective disorder, income-tax jitters and existential dread and people who try it tend to get enthusiastic.

Bill Edmonson was so enthusiastic that by 10 a.m. on a February day on the Pere Marquette River, he broke his second canoe paddle of the day. Like the first, it sheered off where the blade met the handle. Also like the first, Bill held the handle up in the air and looked at it with astonishment, the way he might have looked if he had dipped it into the water and something bit it off. Bill's a big guy; he doesn't know his own strength. His exertions broke two good paddles that morning, and we had no more spares. In his easygoing way, nonchalant, never riled, a southern good-old-boy raised by an accident of history in the north. Bill addressed Mark Wilkes, his partner in the bow. Looks like you're gonna have to do all the work from now on. Mark shrugged, adding the item to a growing list of life's injustices. Another day in the salt mines, he said.

Here in Michigan, the sight of a canoe strapped to an automobile in January or February draws a fair amount of attention. For years, my friends and I have been considered mildly insane for doing it, a judgment we once encouraged because it granted us license for further extreme behavior. It still pleases us to pull into a restaurant parking lot on a cold, snowy morning and park our canoe-topped trucks next to vehicles loaded with skis and snowmobiles. The waitresses always ask in a wonderful, wide-eyed way if we are actually going canoeing

We were college friends and friends of college friends who came together to canoe and camp one weekend every winter. At first, while we were in our early twenties, we pretended the winter expeditions were macho initiation rites. The rivers we paddled were scenic and free-spirited, and they passed through nice country. But we were interested primarily in having a roaring good time and exposing ourselves to hardships severe enough to challenge our powers of endurance. In later years, we would come to appreciate the trips for more subtle reasons.

The Pere Marquette or the PM, as nearly everyone knows her, has always been a favorite among our little group. I got off to a shaky start in the relationship in 1975, during my first winter trip, when Mike McCumby and I ended up walking out of the woods carrying nothing but the rapidly freezing clothes on our backs. We had tried to back paddle our heavily loaded canoe away from a fallen tree, were caught sideways in conflicting currents, and capsized. For months, our friends were extremely helpful. They pointed out that the mishap was the result of our own stupidity in attempting to canoe the river during freakishly high water, for going alone and for attempting a tricky paddling maneuver without the experience to do it right.

It did not, they insisted, prove anything was inherently wrong with winter canoeing. Mike took the criticism well and was back on the PM the following winter. I spent a few years thinking about it. Naturally, I primarily thought about all the fun I was missing. A few minutes on a northern river in winter is enough to convince you that canoeing should indeed be a year-round sport. In winter, rivers are different, their character altered by banks of sculpted ice, by barren trees, by countryside that has been largely abandoned to the snow. Paddling then becomes a process of rediscovering the rivers and the landscape, and of discovering again the sensuous pleasures of gliding through clear water in a canoe. You feel the air, cold and harsh, so brittle it seems to shatter as you pass. You might turn to watch your breath fogging in the air and see a pie of snow fall from a hemlock on the bank. Once you begin noticing such things, it's difficult to stop. You see ice grown into minute, precisely detailed sculptures where the water touches a trailing branch, and notice the silent obliteration of snowflakes as they touch the river. You hear the trickle of runoff beneath the snow along shore, the hissing of current against fringe ice, the distant thumping of a pileated woodpecker.

The river breathes and whispers, blending with the thin sounds of the canoe brushing against water and slush and the dripping of a still-held paddle. A half hour of this and you’re eager to make extravagant claims for the virtues of wilderness, even a wilderness only a few bends concealed from highways and houses.

Adapted by MichiganBlue Magazine with permission from “A Place on the Water: An Angler’s Reflections on Home ”(St. Martin’s Press) by Jerry Dennis, who resides in Traverse City.  Lisa Jensen is the editor of MichiganBlue Magazine.