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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The US Life Saving Service/Coast Guard Station |
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| 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.
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| Barracks inside the station |
This station is beautifully restored and has exhibits about the Life Saving Service and Great Lakes shipping.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The Dune Climb |
Where Did We Stay?
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| 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.
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| Beautiful view |
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