Back in 2008 Miss Sadie and the Cowboy started a lucrative tourist-season enterprise. They offered tour guide services, referrals to their favorite secret places to find the True Up North Experience, and tourist picture-taking. (That last was difficult, as they lack opposable thumbs, but they secured the services of an assistant at a very reasonable price.)
The season is upon us once more, and like all the other businesses that cater to the tourist trade, Miss Sadie and the Cowboy are fluffing up, laying in supplies, and looking forward to seeing old friends. Here they are inspecting a Classic Up North Tourist Picture Taking Location in Elk Rapids to make sure that everything is ready for Show Time.
Those of you from Around Here will recognize that particular landmark. The Swan resides at Rotary Park. Look for it on the bank of the Elk River as you come into town on US-31, right next to the Chamber of Commerce A-frame. If you are a Tourist Person—or even if you are not—this would be an excellent place for you to stop for a little rest.
During the day you can go into the A-frame for clean restrooms and a plentiful supply of valuable Tourist Information. There are nice resting benches outside, along with picnic tables and grills personally inspected by Miss Sadie and the Cowboy, who are very particular when it comes to dining facilities.
The Rotary Park pavilion, where The Public Is Welcome, is a dandy facility for families and social groups.
There is plenty of parking, a bike rack, and a nice little dock on the river side, where you could moor a kayak or canoe if you are out and about on the water. Or you could just sit out there and fish. Or just sit.
Two grills, a woodburning fireplace, enough tables for a crowd and a gated railing to corral toddlers and spaniels round out the amenities. (OK, the railing will keep them corraled long enough for you to have a little breather and then the toddlers will figure out how the latch works and make good their escape, followed by the miscreant spaniels. You are parents. You know how toddlers operate. We won’t even discuss spaniels.)
Spend some quality time watching the river flow by. Listen to the redwing blackbirds and gulls and ducks. Watch the mute swans browse the weeds for their supper. (The Cowboy wishes to emphasize that the swans are decorative but wild. It is prudent to keep a respectful distance.)
On Friday mornings from the end of May until mid-October the Elk Rapids Farmers Market fills the park with fresh and delicious local foods and flowers. That is another very good reason to stop here. I don’t see how you can go wrong.
See a sample Tour Guide at The nooks, the crannies, the incredibly perfect ways to spend part of your vacation in Torch Lake Township. Watch this space for the 2012 version, Miss Sadie and the Cowboy Recommend: Adventures in Antrim County.
Torch Lake Views 
Karma
May 4, 2012
I’d love to be taken on a tour some day by Miss Sadie and the Cowboy. If I ever get to take that photography road trip, I hope to be able to obtain their services.
Gerry
May 4, 2012
The Cowboy is wriggling with delight.
tootlepedal
May 4, 2012
I start volunteering in our tourist office at the end of May. I don’t think I will do it well as you do.
Gerry
May 4, 2012
On the contrary, I think you will do it very well indeed. A good eye, a lively wit, an abiding love for your borderlands–what more could a person wish for from a tour guide?
And then there is the matter of the treacle scones.
Dawn
May 4, 2012
OK. That’s it. Katie and I are coming up somehow. How can we resit a swan like that?
Gerry
May 4, 2012
Resisting the Elk Rapids Swan is futile. That’s what the Chamber figured anyway when the members fixed it up–it was originally a float in the Harbor Days Parade–and put it in the park.
Martha
May 4, 2012
Beat me with a stick- I have forgotten the historical ethnic background of your county. Clue me in again, please.
Gerry
May 4, 2012
I will not beat you with a stick. I am strictly non-violent. Usually. Unless provoked.
Historical ethnic background???? Can we go back just to the Ojibwe nation in the 1600s? Actually I think it might have been the Sioux nation in the first part of the century, before Ojibwe warriors chased them west. And then, on account of we are surrounded by lakes, the superhighways of North American history, came French Jesuits, French Canadian voyageurs, and red-coated British soldiers who were mainly but not exclusively the descendants of Angles, Saxons, Vikings and more pesky French. That brings us up to the end of the 18th century. Next came the Scotch-Irish sons and daughters of Appalachia and the Piedmont, newly-minted Mormons from New York, emigrants fleeing the potato famine in Ireland, a family of Swiss intellectuals from a failed experiment in Illinois, French Canadian loggers, Pottawatomis moving up Lake Michigan to get away from all the Europeans who’d infested the land down around the Grand Rapids. Czechs and Slovaks and Bohemians and Germans who’d supported the Revolutions of 1848, and an endless stream of Civil War veterans from Ohio. Then waves of Swedish loggers and Dutch farmers and some Norwegians who settled over there by East Jordan. Quite a few English Canadians once the Civil War was safely over. Then logging was done and agricultural depressions followed one after the other and a lot of people moved to Flint and Detroit and Saginaw for work in the auto plants. They came back, moved away, went off to war in Europe, came back. Population washes over this landscape the way the waves wash the beach.
After World War II migrant farmworkers came up from Texas and Mexico and Guatemala and Nicaragua to work in the fields and orchards. Some came back every year, and eventually some stayed and made lives here. The appeal of “a cottage on the lake” added a wave of Downstaters and more Ohioans who came up for the summer and eventually forgot to go home.
From the outside we look pretty White Bread, but if you look closely we are as varied as the grains of sand on our beaches.
Why?
P.j. grath
May 4, 2012
Alas, I am on my at-home dial-up connection, so I cannot see pictures of the Duo. Wah!!!!!! I am, however, picturing them in my mind in all the places you describe.
Gerry
May 4, 2012
Oh no!!! I try to make posts dial-up friendly. I will go check to make sure that all these photos are sized correctly. And I will send you a link to the Featured Image: the Cowboy and Miss Sadie with the Swan.
sybiln
May 4, 2012
Miss Sadie and The Cowboy have such marvellous “handles”. I mean if they were Spot and Fluff. it just wouldn’t be the same. It would lack that certain cachet of worldliness.
Tell them I’d love to go on one of their tours. I’d really like to see that swan.
Gerry
May 4, 2012
The Swan is a treat. It’s looking pretty good now, too. Several years ago some miscreants vandalized it, and considerable effort has gone into restoration.
Miss Sadie and the Cowboy would never answer to Spot and Fluff. They barely answer to Miss Sadie and the Cowboy.
Martha
May 4, 2012
Gerry, that is exactly what I was looking for and I thank you for taking the time. I really did want to see where the Dutch came in and who your native tribes are. I’m researching the 1600s for my own background and so that’s just a perfect century to start with!
Gerry
May 4, 2012
Now that is interesting. I should have mentioned all the Ottawas who were here then and, just like the Ojibwe and Pottawatomi people, are still here. Some Dutch descendants from New York arrived in Antrim County in the mid-1800s, but there was a much larger migration of Dutch people from the Netherlands around 1900. Dunno if that’s useful to you or not.
I have a public tree (Antrim – Eastport Civil War Veterans tree) on Ancestry.com that might be of interest, and Ralph Edwards has a huge Antrim database on Rootsweb.
Martha
May 4, 2012
My Dutch family line came from NY to Hillsdale, but I’m poking around other parts of MI for related info. I’ll look over your Ancestry work and Ralph’s! Thanks!
Heather
May 4, 2012
Gerry, have you ever kayaked there, over the Albatross? We love taking beginning kayakers there, because it is so rewarding. And the stump field can simply be other-worldly.
Also, I’m so glad Martha asked about the history of the county. You make an excellent history teacher; thanks for sharing!
Gerry
May 4, 2012
Oddly enough, no. I’ve done most of the Chain, all the way into Elk Lake, but never the Elk River. I have to do a whole post about The Stumps – Glenn Neumann just did some work on that. Glad you liked the mad dash through Antrim history.
Heather
May 4, 2012
I am honestly shocked that Gerry of TLV has not kayaked there! I did a blog post about the coolness of the site a while back…probably when I first moved here. The Albatross was a schooner used by the lumber mill. It sunk in the 1920’s. You can see it just barely under the surface directly across from the reddish-brown house with the yellowish shutters and the flag pole. (Gotta have some way to mark it mentally!)
Gerry
May 5, 2012
So many lakes and rivers, so little time . . . also I haven’t been kayaking in awhile, but Lois Dawson promises to rectify that. I read about your visits to the Albatross – looks like you’ve introduced many people to the spot! There is so much wood under the Elk River–not surprisingly given the history. I wonder what will be revealed when they’re through returning the Boardman River to its original channel?
Nye
May 5, 2012
It looks like a nice place, does it get real busy during the Summer months? It looks like a nice place for camping also, if they would let you. 🙂
Gerry
May 5, 2012
It is a very nice place indeed. It’s just a little picnic and rest area, so not a place where you would camp, but there is an excellent campground at Antrim County Barnes Park in Eastport. There is an RV campground on Bass Lake called Honcho Rest. There are also campgrounds in Central Lake and Ellsworth, but they tend to fill up with summer-long visitors who come up every year. They might or might not set aside spots for short-term vacationers. I’ll have to find out about that.
flandrumhill
May 5, 2012
Those Rotarians do such great work in such simply beneficial ways.
Gerry
May 5, 2012
Yes they do. I like Rotary’s Four-Way Test:
The Four-Way Test
of the things we think, say or do
1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build good will and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
flandrumhill
May 5, 2012
Gerry, I almost added the Test to my comment! Many, many years ago I was the recipient of one of their scholarships. It was a big help to me at just the right time.
Gerry
May 5, 2012
That is very cool. (I still say that.) Some years ago I was a member of Elk Rapids Rotary, and I enjoyed it very much. It really is a service club.
shoreacres
May 5, 2012
I’m curious about the view over the water. Are those all tree stumps? You mentioned a river – looks to me like that might be backwater from the main channel. It caught my eye because it looks so much like many Texas lakes. We only have one natural lake, so the “made” ones are pretty heavy on stumps.
Don’t forget that tonight’s the perigee moon, the biggest and brightest of the year!
Gerry
May 5, 2012
‘Morning Linda! Those are indeed tree stumps. The river channel is on the far side. It was dammed in the 19th century to provide power for a sawmill, and the dam later became a hydroelectric facility. It still operates, though the current buildings date only to the 1920s. I’m going to have to do a whole post about The Stumps, with excellent material provided by Glenn Neumann.
This is just the river. Elk Lake is much larger, and definitely natural. It is party of the Chain of Lakes, and is connected to Torch Lake (Torch River to Lake Skegemog to Elk Lake).
I am longing to see the perigee moon, but the rain and cloud cover are worrying. I’ll hold a good thought for clearing this evening. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s photos.
Gerry
May 5, 2012
Fishweb has a great map of the Elk River and Elk Lake. (Also of the whole Chain, but that’s another post entirely.)