“A return to more traditional travel patterns.”

That’s what Kelly Wolgamott, interim vice president of Travel Michigan, has said Michigan’s tourism economy is experiencing based on travel numbers from 2023. The state – and northern Michigan especially – proved a big draw at the peak of COVID-19, with outdoor recreation spots tallying unprecedented visitor numbers. With that pandemic bump in the rearview, The Ticker looks at how Leelanau County’s summer 2024 was.

In May 2020, Traverse City Tourism President and CEO Trevor Tkach predicted northern Michigan tourism would thrive as COVID-related stay-at-home orders lifted.

“What some of the national indicators are pointing toward is that, when people do start to travel again, they're going to want to have a lot of space,” Tkach said. “They're going to want to be out in nature. They're not going to want to go to big metros. They're going to want to be in more secluded destinations.”

Tkach’s prediction proved accurate, and nowhere was that more evident than at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The park tracked a record-breaking 1,718,696 visitors in 2020, then broke the record again with 2021’s year-end tally of 1.72 million visitors.

In the years since, Sleeping Bear hasn’t gotten anywhere near those pandemic peaks. According to Superintendent Scott Tucker, the park just narrowly cracked 1.5 million visitors in 2022. Last year saw a slight uptick, to 1,583,651 visitors, right in line with the 2019 number of 1,570,001.

While final numbers aren’t available yet for this summer, Sleeping Bear Dunes looks to be bucking recent trends. In the first seven months of 2024, the park recorded 926,506 visitors. That’s lower than through-July tallies from 2020 (931,827) and 2021 (996,650, but higher than the numbers from 2023 (903,640), 2022 (856,052), or 2019 (850,151). Some of that uptick is owed to an unusually mild winter and spring, but summer has been busy, too. Between June and July, Sleeping Bear saw 754,300 visitors, compared to less than 700,000 for the same two-month period in 2022. In fact, this year’s June/July figure is comparable to Sleeping Bear’s record year in 2021, when the park saw 759,393 visitors across those two months.

Katy Wiesen, co-owner of the Crystal River Outfitters Recreation District in Glen Arbor, reports a similarly robust summer. Crystal River Outfitters offers kayak, canoe, bike, and stand-up paddleboard rentals, along with multiple outdoor-oriented retail shops.

“Summer 2024 has been a great one,” Wiesen tells the Leelanau Ticker. “Our recreation and business levels have remained relatively the same since Memorial Day weekend 2020, when we reopened after the pandemic shutdown.”

If there’s an asterisk on the 2024 season for Wiesen, it’s that Crystal River Outfitters will be shutting down kayak and canoe rentals early this year due to a forthcoming bridge and culvert replacement along the business’s usual Crystal River paddle route.

“Labor Day weekend will be the last weekend for paddlers to get out and kayak the Crystal River, as the beloved ‘shoot-the-tube’ culvert will be replaced with a clear span bridge this fall,” Wiesen says. “This clear span bridge will make the portage easier for all ages and ability levels and keep the river healthy. Kayak trips will resume as normal come May 2025.”

The rest of the Recreation District “will remain open for biking, shopping, wine, and winter rentals all year,” Wiesen adds.

Leelanau’s newest outdoor recreation hub also reports a strong season: Mike Sheldon, owner of River Club Glen Arbor (RCGA), says the mini golf hot spot “opened on June 24 to a relatively slow week but then got completely clobbered from July 5 on.”

“We had many days with over 2,500 guests,” Sheldon says. For perspective, the total year-round population of Glen Arbor Township is 757, according to the 2020 Census.

Though RCGA is winding down its peak season, Sheldon says the establishment will remain open through the fall, with live music Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, “tailgate and putt-putt” parties for major college and pro football games, and an “enhanced fall menu with cider, donuts, candy apples, and pumpkin or apple spiced margaritas.”

Despite what seems like a typical bustling summer in Leelanau County, Paul Andrus of Lake Life Efoils says he did notice a difference this year compared to the past few. Andrus launched his Lake Leelanau-based business in 2021 to indroduce the then-brand-new eFoil technology to local customers. Using an electric motor and propellor, eFoil boards elevate riders above the water, simulating the feel of flying. Lake Life Efoils offers sales, rentals, and lessons around the equipment.

“The last three years, we’ve been really busy, with lots of lessons and quite a few sales,” Andrus says of the business. “This year, we did really well with lessons, but sales were definitely down. We usually average 12-15 board sales per year, which is a lot given that these boards range from $9,000 to $14,000. This year, we only had five sales.”

Andrus theorizes that, with travel patterns reverting back to normal, so is spending.

“I think we had a lot of new visitors – and a lot of new residents – in Leelanau [during the pandemic], and a lot of them were buying expensive toys, because they came to the county with a lot money,” he says. “For whatever reason, that seems to have dropped off this year.”

Andrus hopes to make up the difference by embracing northern Michigan’s growing “locals’ summer” tradition.

“We’re doing $50 off a lesson for anybody who’s a local for the whole month of September, and they get a free t-shirt with their lesson,” he says.