Michigan: Traverse City, Spring Break Family Vacations Making Tracks in the Snow. The snowy months make tracking easy to do with young children and northern Michigan offers plenty of tracks to identify - some animal and some of the human variety.  It's cheap, easy and fun outside with your kids. Who knows you may even find evidence of snow angels.

The Traverse City resort area has a split personality, best known for its miles of pristine beaches, championship golf courses and inland lakes, the area also  offers a wide range of winter adventure experiences at a comparatively moderate price. If your family's spring break includes some snow we have an action list for you to follow.

Take a hike. After a fresh snow it is always fun make snow angels, build snow men (actually snow person is a better description), and follow fresh tracks in the snow. Northern Michigan’s plentiful wildlife, whether it’s the familiar heart-shaped hoof prints of white-tailed deer, the canine tracks of coyote and fox, dainty rabbit marks or the convincing dinosaur imitations made by wild turkeys will provide hours of fun in the snow. And best of all it’s free.

Follow the trail markers. Those long, parallel grooves punctuated with intermittent circles? They’re the unmistakable spoor of Skinny-Skiers, and they’re likely to be found anywhere on the hundreds of miles of marked and groomed cross-country trails that weave their way through the region’s vast acreage of forest and parkland. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has eight marked trails, some leading up to panoramic overlooks high above the lake. Other marked trail systems include the Lost Lake Pathway near Interlochen, the 3,500-acre Sand Lakes Quiet Area near Williamsburg and – best of all - the Vasa Pathway, one of the finest cross-country ski trails in the nation. Need to know: A great way to access the trail is from the nearby Timber Ridge RV & Recreation Resort, which has its own lighted trail system for nocturnal members of the species.

Grab your snow shoes. A related family whose numbers have increased dramatically in recent years is the Bigfooted Snowshoer, whose staggered, toothy tracks come in a bewildering range of oval, teardrop and rectangular shapes.  These jovial winter denizens can usually be spotted close to downtown Traverse City at the 500-acre Grand Traverse Commons, whose lovely wooded campus features the castle like spires and walls of a 19th century mental asylum, or the awe-inspiring Lighthouse Park trails at the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula, or along the Boardman River in the Grand Traverse Natural Education Reserve.

Zoom away on a snowmobile. The most impressive winter tracks in the forest, of course, are made by the Northwoods Sledder, a sociable visitor that leaves its characteristic corrugated snowmobile trails in places where speed and thrills can most easily be found. Look (and listen) for them south and east of town, where more than 200 miles of the country’s finest and most diverse snowmobiling wait for them on the Boardman Valley Trail, an 81-mile trail system in the Pere Marquette State Forest, or the Jordan Valley Trail, about a half-hour to the northeast, with more than 130 miles of spectacular trails.

Ski, board, or tube. Some inhabitants of Traverse City’s winter outdoors are more difficult to follow by tracking. For instance, a steep hillside whose slopes are polished and carved by hundreds of shallow crisscrossed paths is probably a regular habitat for the colorful downhill skier – but you might just as easily be looking at the trails of the acrobatic snowboarder or the snow tuber. And no, a Snow Tuber isn’t some sort of winter vegetable. It’s someone who loves flying downhill on a big soft inflated inner tube. 

Skiers, snowboarders and tubers can all be found at Shanty Creek Resorts, a 4,500-acre recreational complex in the beautiful Chain of Lakes region about 30 miles northeast of Traverse City. Ski Magazine rated Shanty Creek the Midwest’s number-one destination in value, dining, lodging, weather and après ski activities. Its ski areas feature a 450-foot vertical with 49 runs for every ability level, plus four snowboarding terrain parks and a tubing park.

But downhillers, snowboarders and tubers can also be found in a few smaller pockets of habitat closer to town. Mt. Holiday is a community-run ski area just east of town with 16 runs, two chairlifts, a tubing run and terrain park, a pleasant day lodge, and awesome views of East Bay. On the other side of the city is Hickory Hills, a small municipal ski area with eight runs served by old-fashioned rope tows.

Try tubing in tandem. One refuge set aside entirely for tubers is Timberlee Hills, a former ski resort in the hills just northwest of town that’s Michigan’s largest snow tubing hill. Timberlee has breathtaking views of Grand Traverse Bay and Lake Leelanau, and even tandem tubes that allow friends and families to hurtle down the hill together.

To learn about other winter adventures, activities and attractions in the Traverse City area, contact the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-TRAVERSE or on line at www.VisitTraverseCity.com

Content and images provided by Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau and Shanty Creek Resort. Copyright 2012.