Jeff Geiger is a gregarious sort, one who believes he shouldn’t be up alone at 5 a.m. And so it doesn’t entire surprise me that he’s relishing the predawn while I’m wondering how to get him to stop for a cup of coffee.
“It’s an excellent day for flying. Visibility is very good. We should be able to see the Manitous and the Fox islands, the Chain of Lakes,” he chirps as we drive south of Traverse City. “This is the kind of day we look for.”
Jeff’s enthusiasm is understandable, for he is a balloonist -- a bearded, bespectacled Jules Verne-type who thinks that a jaunt around the world in a wicker basket dangling beneath a billowing balloon would be a wonderful way to pass time.
As owner and sole pilot of Grand Traverse Balloons, though, he is just as happy to lift you into the skies above Traverse City to prove that there are fun things you can do in this pretty Northern Michigan town without getting wet.
Long known for its clear water and sandy shores, Traverse City is more than just another beach town. It has a flavor all its own – a little quirky at times, a bit wild at others – and it offers enterprising visitors the opportunity to pursue all kinds of unique adventures. You can stalk a wily golden fish, kiss a well-kissed moose on the snout, enjoy a nostalgic drive-in movie, or take the wheel of a 73-ton schooner.
You can even lean out and pluck a pinecone as you soar past the trees in the basket of Jeff Geiger’s hot-air balloon. Assuming, of course, that you have the nerve for it.
“The thought of going up in a balloon scares me,” I tell Jeff.
“It scares me, too,” he replies, leaving me to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.
There’s a gorgeous full moon going down in the west, and the morning sun is just beginning to peek above the eastern horizon as we arrive at our launch point, a clearing in the Pere Marquette State Forest. Jeff and I hold up one corner of the immense fabric balloon while a fan inflates it to the point where two propane burners can finish off the job with toasty blasts of air. They do a wonderful job of chasing the morning chill away, as well!
Soon I’m standing in the wicker basket with Jeff and two other passengers. We’re already 20 feet in the air, even though I never felt us leave the ground. The rising sun throws the balloon’s bulbous shadow out across the forests below. From our silent perch beneath the balloon, we can watch the twin arms of Grand Traverse Bay come into view. Then Torch Lake appears, and the wider expanse of Lake Michigan and -- just as Jeff promised -- the Manitou and Fox islands. Whenever a lake or pond interrupts the trees below us, the water is blanketed with fog. There’s so much water! Now I understand why Jeff’s gear list includes a compact life raft and life jackets.
“We haven’t lost anybody yet,” he says. “But I have dropped sky divers before.”
Pulling a cord attached to a patch of fabric on the top of the balloon to release some of the hot air, Jeff slowly coaxes the balloon to descend for a close-up look at the local wildlife. He often spots deer, foxes and eagles during his flights, but today the only creatures visible on the ground are sleepy Traverse City residents beginning their day. Jeff waves to children waiting for their school buses and greets startled commuters with a hearty “Good Morning!” from the sky.
“Can you grab a pine cone?” he asks, dipping toward the treetops beneath us and then firing his burners to lift us back up.
During his 18 years of ballooning about the Traverse City area Jeff has always landed exactly where he wants to, and this time is no different. After an hour-long flight that covers about 20 miles, he deposits us neatly -- and ever-so-gently-- on a dirt road in the middle of some farmer’s wheat fields. As we enjoy the traditional champagne celebration to honor Jeff’s piloting skills and our own survival, I’m beginning to warm to the idea of joining him if he ever embarks on that round-the-world flight.
But there is more than one way to ride the wind, as I discover when I board the tall ship Manitou for a sail up West Grand Traverse Bay. Under the guidance and singsong cadence of the ship’s mates, I join several other passengers in hoisting the heavy canvas sails. Over and over, we grab the inch-and-a-half thick lines and haul away until the sails are fully unfurled.
“Do you know where the term ‘slacker’ came from?” Captain Joe Neihardt bellows as we heave on the lines. “I don’t want to see any slack in that line!”
Straining against the Manitou’s masts, the 3,000 square feet of canvas gathers up the wind and uses it to drive the schooner across the Bay. A replica of 19th century schooners that brought settlers to the Traverse City area and took deckloads of farm produce and timber away to market, the Manitou now carries would-be adventurers across the sweetwater waves three times each day.
Before the railroads and steamships arrived here in the late 19th century, wind power was the key to life in Traverse City, and schooners like the Manitou were the fragile ties that bound this isolated outpost to the rest of the world. Captain Joe says there were times during the 1850s and 1860s when 150 sailing ships could be counted hauling cargo past the Manitou Islands in a single day.
This evening we’re the only schooner in the Bay, although several other tall ships call Traverse City their home. In fact, the Traverse City area boasts more of these stately vessels than any other port in the region. There’s the Welcome, a replica of an armed British sloop from the War of 1812, the dainty schooner Madeline, and the “schoolship” Inland Seas with its trademark red sails, which is available for a variety of education excursions.
As we cross the West Bay during our two-hour sunset cruise, Captain Joe and his crew of three instruct their passengers on the finer arts of sailing. Patiently, they explain rigging, navigation, and sailing jargon, and at one point, the captain offers to let each of us take the wheel.
“You’ve got 73 tons of schooner in your hands right now,” he tells me as I grab the spokes on the wheel, a fact that would have been more intimidating under a 20-knot gale but which is daunting just the same as the Manitou cuts through the calm water.
At 114 feet, with a 21-foot beam, a two-masted schooner like Manitou seems impressive enough. But Captain Joe says it would have been the equivalent of “a pickup truck” during the 1850s, when many vessels on the Great Lakes needed three or four masts to speed their 300-foot hulls through the water.
