Flint Outdoor Activities

Each year at the onset of summer, the costumed bards, knights, and royalty at Mayfaire Renaissance Festival welcome visitors to enjoy rollicking entertainment and peruse handcrafted wares throughout the wooded festival grounds. Attendees step into a world of jousters and jesters, replete with Renaissance-era songs and dances and smartphones fashioned from mutton. All-ages-appropriate comedians regale families with zany antics, and visitors can ask mystical tarot-card readers questions about the future.

The baseball and softball instructors at Great Lakes Baseball Academy share their passion for America's pastime with students as they draw upon accolades that include two national minor-league titles and a high-school state softball record for strikeouts in one year. Inside the year-round, 5,000-square-foot facility, coaches with experience at the major, minor, and high-school levels enrich players' skills during private lessons and team-training sessions. Line drives echo through three climate-controlled, 80-foot batting and pitching tunnels, which include Iron Mike pitching machines that hurtle balls from 40 to 90 mph and occasionally charge the plate. Along with their training grounds, the academy's shop stays stocked with such gear as the latest bats and gloves.

Talladay Farms ushers in cool air and the smell of drying leaves with harvest-season festivities near an apple orchard. Each year, staff members chart out complex mazes that illustrate an annual theme—this year, it's pirates—across roughly 7.5 miles of twisting paths carved into 26 rolling acres of golden corn. When they're not meandering through the complex mazes, guests gather around bonfires and picnic tables or head next door to Wasem Fruit Farm's apple orchards and pumpkin patch. As Halloween nears, they convert the twisting and turning paths of one maze into a haunted labyrinth, where actors leap from the rustling dead stalks of corn wearing terrifying masks or shirts with facts about how often paper cuts happen. Conscientious staffers place several checkpoints throughout each maze and hand out maps to keep guests from getting lost.

For 26 years, the experienced instructors at Divers Incorporated have taught students about scuba skills and environmental awareness. Divers Incorporated is a PADI Five Star Instructor Development Center, and its staff of PADI-certified instructors introduce guests to scuba with a broad variety of classes designed to appeal to potential divers with varying levels of interest in the underwater world. The entry-level PADI Discover Scuba Diving Experience gives divers the opportunity to learn scuba basics in a low-pressure environment. First, classes view an instructional video and learn how to use the equipment, after which they take to the pool and learn how to breathe beneath the water's surface. Five-week instructional courses take a more thorough tack, instructing students on the fundamentals they need to know to take an open-water dive and secure their certifications.

The 2012 golf season at Mulberry Hills Golf Club marks 50 years since architect Hank Clayton unveiled his verdant brainchild, a celebration that showcases the course’s maturation of ancient oak trees and tangled heather that now engulf the site's 188 meadowed acres. The natural habitat invites all players, from greenhorns to green-jacket holders, to take on the 18-hole excursion that covers 6,635 yards of pristine fairways, well-kempt greens, and vibrant flowers that border playable areas. As players captain their GPS–equipped 2012 Yamaha golf carts over the terrain, they encounter a gauntlet of obstacles that attempts to thwart drives, putts, and 3-iron swordfights. The par 3, 155-yard fourth hole presents a difficult forced carry over water onto a peninsula green, the most challenging of the four holes featuring shots over water. The course superintendants keep rounds moving with a pace-of-play program that ensures rounds last 4.5 hours or less, leaving plenty of daylight for sunbathing golf balls or knitting a skirt from collected divots. After the round, players can celebrate their dominance over nature at Hank's Place Bar & Grill with a menu of American fare, draft beers, and free WiFi.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 71 course

• Total length of 6,635 yards from the back tees

• Course rating of 70.9 from the back tees

• Course slope of 122 from the back tees

• Four sets of tees per hole

• Designed by Hank Clayton

Since 1825, the Old Town area has seen both prosperous times and, for the second half of the 20th century, stretches of destitution. Within the last 30 years, dedicated locals have started turning Old Town back around, dropping its building vacancy rates from 90% to less than 10% and establishing a slew of festivals, art venues, and boutiques. The Old Town Commercial Association plays its role in this cultural and economic renaissance by holding the annual Old Town's Taste & Tour to raise funds for community revitalization projects.

More than 300 people attended the event in 2011, sampling bites of cuisine dished out by local restaurants. Owners of local lofts give participants a rare opportunity to tour their unique living spaces and the rooftop cannons that launch them to work each morning.