Travels with Twinkles: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

September 5 - 6, 2017:

We start the travel day with a hearty $4.95 buffet breakfast at the Casino and manage to get on the road before it starts raining. It’s one of our longer drives at 197 miles taking I-75 south over the Mackinac Bridge and then route 31 south along the Lake Michigan coast. It’s not a fun drive, it’s raining intermittently and I have to stay focused going through several coastal towns with many intersections, narrow lanes and congestion. There were several very upscale looking towns along the route, Petoskey and Charlevoix in particular, that I would have liked to explore a bit, but today its more of a destination trip. Approaching Traverse City, the self proclaimed Cherry Capital of the World, we kept passing roadside markets with signs for fresh baked pies that tempted me greatly.

Mural seen while passing through Charlevoix

We have a reservation, for a change, at the Platte River Campground on the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It’s a dry camping site which ordinarily would be fine, but since the campground is in the forest, the forecast is for cold rain, my solar system will be ineffective and they don’t allow generators it may be a cold damp couple of nights in the RV. As we register at the campground, we ask if an electric camp sites is available and luckily for us, there have been a few cancellations and we can get one of those campsites.

In the evening, we take a ride to the nearby town of Honor where they still have a drive in movie appropriately named the Cherry Bowl. We then stopped for a beer at the Lumberjack Bar where they had a $6 beer and burger special. I was disappointed with the decor inside, it being the Lumberjack Bar, as it was basically one old saw on the wall. The burgers looked really good and everyone in there had one, but we had already eaten.

The Cherry Bowl Drive-in

It’s a weird weather day, its raining lightly as we set up camp, then the sun comes out, although this seems to be norm around here on the lake. We take a ride to the Platte River Point with distant views of the Empire Bluffs in the distance and then continued on to Point Betsie. Point Betsie was beautiful and wild with the sun breaking through a blue sky filled with layers of white cumulus clouds and the surf crashing into the old steel bulkheads creating big sprays of water in front of the old Lighthouse. Watching the raw power of this surf made me think of the flooding in Texas, the wild forest fires out west and the new storm developing on the east coast and how vulnerable our world is to the powers of nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Betsie_Light

The Point Betsie Lighthouse is a beauty

It was a little scary walking up this concrete ramp to the base of the Lighthouse

As you were looking straight down into the pounding surf

The surf was really rough

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore emcompasses a 35 mile stretch along Lake Michigan and the north and south Manitou Islands. It was authorized in 1970 with much controversy from area residents. I was kind of thinking there wouldn’t be so much to do here, possibly I could just relax, but I was wrong again. There is a lot to do here, many hiking trails, many swimming beaches, a beautiful canoe river and many sand dune areas, lighthouses and history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Bear_Dunes_National_Lakeshore

There are also several ghost towns in this area, mostly old Timber camp towns that died when the timber was gone. The town of Aral was one we visited athough there is nothing left to see today.

The beach area at Aral with storm clouds moving towards us

The black iron particles in the sand leave interesting patterns

Aral was a bustling logging camp in its day

The name “Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore”, sounds a little goofy to me but is derived from the Ojibwa Indian legend of Sleeping Bear. Indian legends and creation stories are pretty weird, as are all creation stories.

We took a ride along the lakeshore to do the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, its a beautiful drive through a forested area with several lake and dune overlooks. Several areas of the forest have been replanted here and it looks strange to see the trees all evenly spaced in rows and about the same size. The most impressive thing is the Lake Michigan Overlook on top of a huge sand bluff. It is possible to walk down this sand bluff, but it is extremely steep and highly discouraged, but strangely not off limits. In the park brochure they state; “The vast majority of visitors take in the view from atop the bluff and don’t risk erosion, injury and rescue fees by going down - not to mention the hour or two it takes to climb back up”.

A view from a scenic drive overlook

Stunning view from the Lake Michigan overlook

Looking downhill to the Lake

We took the short trail to a higher vantage point

These dunes are truly remarkable

We then went to the Dune Climb Trail area which is a 3 1/2 mile trail going up and down over nine sand hills to Lake Michigan. It was really steep in places, but since it had rained overnight, not so awful difficult. We went about 3 miles and turned around with one hill remaining, as we just didn’t want to spend any more time on it. We could see the lake and the rest was mostly downhill so we decided that was close enough to count.

View from the top of the first hill

There is much more to go, it is deceptive, when you get to the top, there is another hill ahead,
then another for miles

This is our turn around spot

Our last stop was the Glen Haven Historic Village which is a natural harbor on Sleeping Bear Bay that was originally a logging company with a port that was a fuel supply port for ships when they burned wood. It was taken over by a David Day who was one of the first to start reforestation of the forests for sustainability. In the early 1920’s when the lumber business was in decline, he started the Glen Haven Canning Company. He bought cherries, peaches, raspberries and apples from local farmers and operated the canary until the early 1940’s. He was a very resourceful man and recognized that tourism was the way of the future. He then started the Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile tourist attraction in 1935 by adding ballon tires to a fleet of cars which he used to give tourist rides in the sand dunes. This closed in 1978 after 43 years when Glen Haven became part of the National Lakeshore. The original Cannery building has now been turned into a museum with exhibits on the cannery and with many historic boats on display. The village also includes the Sleeping Bear Inn, a general store, a blacksmith shop.