Lighthouses, Beaches and Barns - Sleeping Bear Dunes Area (September 19 - 29, 2026)

 

This is a region of surprises.  "North woods" forests leading onto sand beaches beside an enormous inland sea.  Fall colors in the campground that are not found at the lakeshore just a few miles away. Lighthouses with the towers embedded into the keepers homes.  Sunny days consumed by fog in a matter of minutes.  

We have explored here for 10 delightful days. Here are some of the things we saw.

Mission Point Lighthouse

Mission Point Lighthouse.  The largest bay in the area is Grand Traverse Bay (7-10 miles wide and 32 miles long).  Traverse City is at the bottom of the bay.  The bay is split into two arms at the base by the 18 mile long Old Mission Peninsula.  There is a lighthouse at the end of the peninsula.

Mission Point

The scenic (and we mean SCENIC) drive up the peninsula passes 11 vineyards in 18 miles.  Land not cultivated by grapes is planted in cherry orchards.  We read that Lake Michigan waters absorb heat from sunlight during the summer and radiate warmth during the fall, extending the growing season.  Also, these crops like the sandy, well-drained, glacial soil.

Early settlers cabin

The lighthouse was not open when we visited, but we were able to explore the grounds, where we also saw an early settler's log cabin.

Cold and beautiful misty sunrise

We also went to Traverse City to buy warm clothes.  Our packing choices in 90 degree Virginia ten days before did not prepare us for 45 degree morning dog walks.  Thank you Burlington Coat Factory for coats, hats and gloves.

Port Oneida

Port Oneida is a collection of famhouses, barns, and other structures of 18 homesteads in a Rural Historic District completely within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  You can get a self-guided tour pamphlet from the Lakeshore Visitors Center.  The tour takes you along paved and dirt roads to see the remnants of a modest agricultural community.

Port Oneida School

The area had seen prosperity when logging was the primary industry.  The small town of Port Oneida was built around the dock where wood was sold to steam ships.

Lonely barns sitting in fields preserve this quiet bit of history

After the land was logged off, the area was farmed, and the town of Port Oneida quietly vanished.  The tightly knit, interdendent farmers eeked a living off the land.

And then we saw some Sandhill Cranes in a field...

The structures date from the late 1800's to the early 1900s.  The farmhouses still have people living in them, the barns are empty.  The buildings are quite picturesque set in this beautiful landscape.  

Grand Traverse Lighthouse

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse is at the top of the Leelanau Peninsula which separates Grand Traverse Bay from Lake Michigan.  The Leelanau is also loaded with vineyards and cherry orchards, and is home to picturesque small towns and the Grand Traverse Band of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indian Reservation.

Grand Traverse Lighthouse guards a rocky section of shoreline

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse is located in Leelanau State Park but is operated by the local historical society.  The building is quite beautiful.  The exhibits inside are a mixture of lighthouse keeping history and local history.  The view from the top is spectacular.  This lighthouse marks the start of the treacherous nautical passage between the Manitou Islands and the shoreline that we mentioned in an earlier post.

The Platte River and scenic dunes beyond

The Platte River is a narrow, pretty, drifting river that cuts through the dunes.  It wanders nearly 30 miles, passing through 10 lakes before emptying into Lake Michigan.  The lower Platte is popular for canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards.  On the day we visited, the mouth of the river was loaded with fishermen in boats and standing in waders.

The Manitou Islands in the distance

We had read that the shallow, warm waters of the Platte River make it a summer family swimming destination.  It is also gorgeous.  We had great views of the dunes along the coastline to the North, and the ends of both North and South Manitou Islands.

Point Betsie Lighthouse

The Point Betsie Lighthouse.  South of the Lakeshore stands the glorious Point Betsie Lighthouse.  There was also a US Life Saving Service Station nearby back in the day.  The station building has been moved back from the shoreline and is now a private residence.

Life Saving Service Station Building

This is the third lighthouse we've seen here where the lighthouse is integrated into the structure of the keepers house.  You walk through part of the house to reach the lighthouse "tower" stairs.  We are used to seeing lighthouses as separate towers from the keepers quarters.

Shoreline at Point Betsie

The Point Betsie Lighthouse has been meticulously renovated with very interesting exhibits about the lighthouse, the life saving station and the conservation work being undertaken today on the adjoining Nature Conservancy land.  The lighthouse is still protecting the coastline with an automated, electric beacon.

Shoreline erosion protection measures at Point Betsie

Because the lighthous is on a sandy spit of land, there are a variety of shoreline erosion protection measures in place along its base, to keep it from being washed away.

Esch Beach

Esch Beach is one of a handful of dog beaches in the area.  The rest of the beaches are closed to dogs to protect the vulnerable nesting areas of endangered Piping Plovers. 

Clear, clear water

It is a beautiful, scenic beach and the perfect place for Schooner to swim.  The water was so clear you could see her legs churning underwater.  I only waded in once, the water was very cold.

As the fog creeps in

While we were playing with Schooner on the beach, fog crept in and stole a remarkably sunny day.

Approaching Esch Beach with green leaves on the trees...

...while fall has already arrived at the campground a few miles away.

Atop 400-Foot Dunes - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (September 20-21, 2026)

Atop a very high dune!

It is a windy day.  You are standing 400+ feet (that's right, think of it as a 35 story tall building) above Lake Michigan on a sand dune looking straight down at the lake.  At this height things on the lake should look like ants, but you can see what must be huge white capped waves roll by.  Welcome to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

400+ feet down

Sleeping Bear Dunes is located on the Northwest Corner of the Michigan lower peninsula.  If you are visualizing the famous Michigan mitten, it is near the tip of the little finger.

Glaciers bulldozed this area, piling up rock, gravel and sand.  When the ice sheets retreated around 14,000 years ago, the melt water filled in the huge holes to form the Great Lakes.  Westerly winds across Lake Michigan moved sand onto the piles of rock debris along the shoreline to form what they call perched dunes - sand dunes built on top of piles of rock.  The dunes are 400-500 feet high.  This park is part of the longest fresh water sand dune system in the world.

The dark area on top is the Sleeping Bear

The area got its name from a large vegetation covered dune that sits above the other dunes.  It was a natural navigation aid identifying the area.  It looks like a sleeping animal and is named for a sad but sweet Anishinaabek story.

Mother bear watching over her cubs

The Story of Manitou Islands and the Sleeping Bear Dune

Long ago, across the lake in what is now known as Wisconsin, there was a terrible hunger.  A bear and her 2 cubs swam a great distance across the lake in search of food.  The cubs became tired and drowned within sight of land.  The broken-hearted mother bear waded ashore, and climbed the dune to lie down, looking at the water where her babies died.  Both of the cubs surfaced as two little islands (North and South Manitou Islands) and the mother bear continues to watch over her children from atop the dune to this day.

Glen Lake

What Did We Do?

The Pierce Stocking Drive is a beautiful, scenic, 7-1/2 mile drive that provides a great overview of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  It takes you through forest and dune ecosystems and includes dramatic visitas of Lake Michigan and Glen Lake. Glen Lake was once a bay in Lake Michigan, but is now separated from the larger lake by sand dunes.  The drive was created for visitors by a guy named Pierce Stocking before the formation of the park.  Most of the photographs in this post are from this amazing drive.

A covered bridge along Pierce Stocking Drive.

Historic Glen Haven is a vestigal historic community that is maintained as part of the park.  It is located on Sleeping Bear Bay which formed a natural port and also provided refuge for ships during storms.  Early European settlers lumbered the abundant forests and sold the wood at the port to fuel steam ships.  They also shipped the timber to build cities elsewhere.  After the forests were gone, the settlers planted orchards on the cleared land, and a cannery was built in Glen Haven to preserve the fruit.  The area is still known today for fruit, particularly cherries.  The town has a beautiful beach.

The US Life Saving Service/Coast Guard Station

The view from the station porch

The US Life Saving Service Station is also in Glen Haven.  Shipping to and from Chicago along Lake Michigan was routed between the Manitou Islands and the shoreline.  While it was quicker, the shallow, shifting shoals made the passage risky.  In addition to light houses set up on the islands, life saving stations were set up in Glen Haven and on both islands.  The US Life Saving Service eventually became part of the US Coast Guard.  If this sounds familiar, we have visited other US Life Saving Service Stations on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  

Barracks inside the station

This station is beautifully restored and has exhibits about the Life Saving Service and Great Lakes shipping.

This life saving boat was self-bailing with built-in flotation devices to help keep it afloat.

The boat house has several life saving boats and other life saving equipment.  It also has tracks that were used to move the boats on carriages across the sand to the shoreline.

Tracks to carry heavy boats to the beach.

The Dune Climb is a famous wall of sand 284 feet tall, where visitors are invited to climp up and run down the dune.  Visitors are discouraged from going up and down other dunes in the park both for the safety of the dunes and the visitors.  We didn't climb, but we watched as others did.

The Dune Climb

Where Did We Stay?

Indigo Bluffs Campground

Indigo Bluffs Campground and RV Resort is 3 miles from the park Visitors Center in Empire.  The large, charming Campgound has mostly tree-lined sites with gravel drives and cement patios.  The RV Resort (next door) has paved, well-manicured sites set up for Big Rigs.  We are in the Campground side and love it.  It must be bustling in the summer, though right now it is 1/2 full and quiet.

Beautiful view

Breakfast Cereal and Dinner Theater – Battle Creek MI area (September 16 – 17, 2026)

 

You may already know the story of cereal manufacturing in Battle Creek, Michigan.  Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a member of the Battle Creek Seventh Day Adventist community, ran the prestigious Battle Creek Sanitarium, promoting a vegetarian diet, fresh air, and exercise.  He tinkered with developing healthy, vegetable and whole grain-based foods to serve at the San.  One day, left over corn porridge dried and flaked, generating the predecessor to what we know as corn flakes today.  Dr. Kellogg and his brother, WK Kellogg figured out how to manufacture corn flakes and other breakfast cereal.

 

Meanwhile CK Post, inspired by his stay at the San, experimented in his barn at home to create a cereal-based beverage, Post-ums  He went on to found the cereal company we know as Post.

 

Both the Kellogg’s and Post companies have factories in town.  It is said that you can smell and identify which cereal they are cooking that day.  While we could not identify the particular cereal, it certainly did smell like breakfast!

 

Part of the Visitors Center Exhibit

Sadly, neither factory is open for factory tours.  There is a small exhibit area in the city visitors center about the history of cereal production in Battle Creek, and cereal brand mascots.

 

The Underground Railroad

Back in the day, Battle Creek was a stop on the Underground Railroad.  During the 1840s and 1850s, Erastus and Sarah Hussey helped more than 1,000 slaves find safety in the North.  This important contribution is commemorated by a lovely statue depicting episodes these brave people might encounter during their dangerous trek to freedom.  Also depicted is Harriet Tubman, known as the “Black Moses” to honor her importance in the railroad, even though she never came to Battle Creek.

 

Sojourner Truth

Important and well-known former slave, and abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Sojourner Truth lived in Battle Creek for the last 27 years of her life.  She is represented by a beautiful 12-foot statue in the town’s Monument Square.

 

WK Kellogg Foundation

In addition to manufacturing, Battle Creek is home to the WK Kellogg Foundation that funds groups that support education, children and families.  They have a large headquarters downtown.  WK Kellogg’s home was moved to the foundation campus where it is used for special events.

 

WK Kellogg Home

We camped in nearby Marshall MI at CampTurkeyville, part of the Turkeyville Restaurant and Dinner Theater complex.  We attended a matinee of “A Walk with Patsy Cline”, a retrospective of the music of country music legend, Patsy Cline, whose life was tragically cut short by an airplane crash.  If you guesed that we would eat a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at Turkeyville, you would be right.  They carved the turkey off of a ginormous bird.  The show was pretty great, too.  It had 2 actors and a 5-piece band.

 

Where Did We Stay?

 

CampTurkeyville is a large, newish, incredibly clean campground behind the Turkeyville restaurant and dinner theater.  You can walk to the restaurant for a reasonably priced turkey sandwich or turkey dinner, or you can order dinner online and take it back to your camper.  They have an ice cream parlor with home made ice cream.  The huge gift shop has frozen turkey meals.  We bought their chili ($7.99) and shephards pie ($9.99) to put in our motor home freezer to eat later along our trip.  CampTurkeyville is a 10 mintue drive to the town of Marshall where you can find groceries, a dog groomer, etc, and 20 minutes from Battle Creek.

A River, a Valley, a Canal, and a Train – Cuyahoga Valley National Park (September 12-14, 2026)

The Cuyahoga River 

The Cuyahoga Valley National Park is an understated, lovely park preserving a stretch of the Cuyahoga River as it snakes and twists through a pretty valley with sometimes plunging sides.  The park is just outside Cleveland OH.

CVNP focuses on the social and economic transformation in the 1800s of the region and the fledgling United States by improved transportation of materials and manufactured goods through canals and then trains.  The Ohio and Erie Canal changed Ohio from subsistence small farms to a manufacturing powerhouse. 

 

Locks opening to the now dry canal

The O&E Canal was undertaken after the success of the Erie Canal connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River and New York City.  The Ohio and Erie Canal connected Lake Erie with the Ohio River and the Mississippi and New Orleans.  Once completed, there was a continuous route from New York to New Orleans.  Raw materials and manufactured goods floated from Ohio to the East Coast and to the Gulf of Mexico, and vice versa.

 

Such a scenic river

The Cuyahoga River itself was so polluted by industrial waste and sewage that it caught fire in Cleveland 10 times.  The last time was in 1969.  It was one of the stimulants for the Clean Water Act of 1972.  This part of the Cuyahoga is smaller and faster moving, but also became polluted and neglected.

 

The Boston Mills Visitors Center was originally a store along the railroad

Over the years, local groups had purchased tracts of the Cuyahoga Valley to protect, preserve or restore.  Those bits of land were stitched together into this National Park in 1974.  The park is located in the outer suburbs of both Cleveland and Akron.  Consequently, the park surrounds and adjoins various established communities.  As you drive through the park, you pass through lovely villages and groups of buildings.  The park feels integrated, much like a patchwork quilt into the vitality of the region.  Unlike most National Parks that have visitors centers built specifically for the park, CVNP visitors centers are housed in historic buildings in these existing communities.

 

Is that a ski slope?  Yes, there are two in the park

Some National Parks are dramatic with geysers, sweeping vistas or dinosaur bones.  Some National Parks are more contemplative.  Lovely places to relax and renew in nature.  CVNP is one of these calm and restorative parks.

 

What Did We Do?

The Canal Exploration Center

 

The Canal Exploration Center has impressive exhibits explaining the history, economics and physics of the Ohio and Erie Canal and canals in general.  It is really quite wonderful.  Much of the canal was destroyed by a huge flood in 1913 and never rebuilt.  A part of the canal has been restored near the Canal Exploration Center, and they perform demonstrations of the locks there during the summer.  The center is housed in a former tavern and store that served food and drink to folks waiting to pass through the locks and sold goods to families living on the canal barges.  At the time we visited, it was only open to the public on weekends.

The Canal Towpath Trail is well used!

 The Canal Towpath Trail follows along the towpath route, even though the canal is no more than a ditch or has been obliterated.  It is very popular for walkers, runners and cyclists.

 

Here comes our Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad train

The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad restores and preserves old train equipment.  You can ride along the canal path on old dedicated train tracks, seeing the river switch back and forth as well as wetlands and forests.  We rode in a restored California Zephyr car up in the domed seat section.  The train runs back and forth along 26 miles of track.  We got on in the middle at the town of Peninsula, and traveled South to Akron and back.  A 2 ½ hour trip.

 

Brandywine Falls - 60 feet down

Brandywine Falls is a dramatic waterfall where the Brandywine Creek drops 60 feet.  Early settlers to the area used the force of these and other falls in the valley to power mills and early industry.  It is now a scenic attraction in the park with a handy boardwalk along the cliff face to see the falls.

 

Looking out the dome window to the train behind us

Where Did We Stay?

(We often get asked this question, so we thought we would start including the information.)

 

We stayed at the Streetsboro/Cleveland SE KOA 10 miles (20+ minutes) from the Boston Mills Visitors Center.  It is convenient to both the park and to suburban amenities like grocery stores, Target and Lowes.  It is also near the charming town of Hudson that has bakeries, restaurants, etc.

 

Ecstatic to be on the road again!

Where Have We Been?

(It has been two years after all)

You may have noticed that we have not added to this blog since September 2024.  Our trip to Cape Cod in 2024 was cut short by a family emergency that sent us home.  Shortly after that, Dana injured her back.  That started a cascade of orthopedic adventures that resulted in 4 surgeries and 3 prosthetic joints between the 2 of us.  We traveled when we could.  We are now fit enough to run the roads again and discover and share places with you that are new to us.  Hooray!!!