Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Trip taken: August 12, 2010

If you're from Michigan, you know about Sleeping Bear Dunes and also probably heard the Ojibwe story for how they came into being (beautifully told by Kathy-Jo Wargin in The Legend of Sleeping Bear). Legend has it that a mother bear and her two cubs were fleeing from Wisconsin and swam across Lake Michigan. The mother bear arrived first, only to realize her cubs were not with her any longer. She climbed the dunes and used them as a look out for her cubs. But her cubs never made it across the lake, but rather, they became the North and South Manitou Islands.

The landscape tells a different story, one that begins during the last ice age as a sheet of ice, miles thick, began retreating from its cover of Michigan. Millions of tons of sand and gravel and rocks were carried away by rivers from the ice margin and make up much of the visible landscape. Furthermore, large glacial deposits, or moraines, were left behind, providing the structure for the very steep bluffs along the lakeshore. In the thousands of years since the ice retreated, these bluffs were battered by waves and wind and sand and gravel became exposed only to be blown up and around by the wind, where they created a large dune field up on top of the bluffs, in what are known as "perched dunes." It is one of these perched dunes that became the mother bear of Ojibwe legend. But honestly, I don't think most people know the geologic background of the park, which is okay, as long as they are able to appreciate that it took a long time for it to come into being.

The darkly shaded bump on top of the dunes is the Sleeping Bear of legend

 Last summer, my friend Stephanie (lovingly called Smac by those who know her), and I made a point to visit The Dunes on our quest to acquire cancellation stamps at each National Park. We stayed at my family's cottage in northern Michigan where, over healthy snacks of blueberries and peppers, I learned how to play Canasta - a game I quickly forgot how to play but want to pick up again!

Smac, healthy snacks, and canasta

But early the next morning we packed up our lunches and took off on the road out to The Dunes! It takes a little while to get there from anywhere, but the closest city is Traverse City, which has its own airport and tons of neat shops downtown. Then you drive through the farmland west of town where you'll see anything from corn and potatoes to grapes and hops being grown.

The easiest thing for a family to do at the Dunes, if they want to get in the sand quickly, is to go to the Dune Climb, just north of Empire (turn right just after the Visitor Center). The Dune Climb let you get out of your car and into the sand, about 10 feet away. Here, you can climb about 100 feet up a sand dune. You can stop there if you want, but the real treat is about an hour's hike past the Dune Climb. In the summer, you want to make the hike along the Cottonwood Trail in the morning before the sand gets to be too hot - or make sure you have good foot protection - because you're in a land of no shade and a lot of ups and downs over little dunes, passing between cottonwood trees and through fields of aromatic dune grass.

Looking back toward the parking lot from the start of the Cottonwood Trail. Right where the trees are seen above the sand line is the edge of the Dune Climb. Glen Lake is in the background.

Trail blazes for the Cottonwood Trail.

Cottonwood Trail.

On the return journey from the beach. Regardless, it's a lot of hot sand to walk through!

South Manitou Island in the distance seen from the Cottonwood Trail.

Once you reach the end of your journey on the Cottonwood Trail, you are rewarded with a thin stretch of a cobble-strewn, sandy beach. Michigan's beaches are one of the world's best known secrets and no one I know who has visited them has ever found nicer beaches anywhere in the world. The sand is frequently referred to as singing sand for the noise it makes as you shuffle through it. And in most places there is nothing but sand at the beaches. For the most part, the sand is not sharp, or littered with shells or trash or large stones. For the most part!

At Sleeping Bear, though, there are plenty of cobbles to be found along the beach, which can make wading in the water a little bumpy, but it is well worth it. If you didn't know any better, you might think you were in the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean and if I remember right, the water temperature that day was at least 80°F!!

Beach at the end of the Cottonwood Trail.

Crystal clear, warm waters of Lake Michigan!

The sandy part of the beach

Smac and I stayed down at the beach for a good hour before making the return journey to the car parked at the Dune Climb. The day was getting on, and we had a few other things we wanted to do so we headed back toward Empire. BUT, if you were to keep going north in the park you would eventually come to a turn off where you can visit a Coast Guard station and maritime museum as well as take a ferry out to both North and South Manitou Islands where you can go back country camping, snorkeling among shipwrecks, and hike along steep island bluffs!

We made a quick stop at the Visitor Center in Empire to collect our official Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore park brochure as well as get our Sleeping Bear Dunes cancellation stamps. The center is a useful stop, especially if you have kids, to get a general overview of the geology, biology, and history of the park. It was a nice day, though, and we had other things we wanted to do.

 

We then went south of Empire to a little hike at Empire Bluffs. From this short, easily hikable trail, you get beautiful and classic views of Sleeping Bear Dunes. Along the way, though, we found rusted out old farm equipment and a section of the trail where various trees are marked with different colored ribbons to show which trees are infected with destructive and invasive parasites, fungi, insects, and other maledictions.

Farm equipment on the Empire Bluffs trail

Colored ribbons showing infected trees.

Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Smac and Me at the Empire Bluffs overlook.

After Empire Bluffs, Smac and I drove up to the Big Daddy (or Momma?) of them all: The Sleeping Bear Dunes! These dunes are MASSIVE! While dunes at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore rise over 300 feet, Sleeping Bear Dunes rise over 400 feet! This causes the dune slopes to frequently oversteepen and a large sand slide will occur, sending massive amounts of sand down into the lake. Therefore, maintaining dune vegetation is crucial in the park's management plan. However, one of the park's main attractions gives you the opportunity to hike down the 400-foot dune, as long as you realize you will have to climb back up (a good reason to try the smaller Dune Climb first!).

Getting ready to head down the dune!

An overlook allows those unable to go down the dune a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan.

Looking up from the bottom of the dune. It's deceiving because at the top of the sand line in the photo (where the sky starts), the dune continues but at a shallower angle, so you just can't see it from here!

Smac coming down the dune.

On the way back up, I stopped to take a picture showing the steep incline of the dune. It's pretty much a 100% grade!

Smac and me back at the top of the dune!

There are frequently a lot of people at this dune climb, especially as the sun starts to set because you really don't have a better vantage point anywhere else in Michigan than here! Unfortunately, it also means there are many people who don't understand their surroundings. For example, as I was climbing back up the dune I stopped to wait for Smac to catch up and a very large man was sitting on the slope, exhausted, sunburned, and clearly in over his head. His intentions were good in that his son wanted to go down to the bottom so he went with. But he was out of shape and had no water. That's not to say he wasn't refreshing himself; in fact, while I was talking to him, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a Budweiser (king of beers?) and started guzzling it. I appreciate the fact that he was out there enjoying a day with his family, but when you're in a National Park, in nature, I surely hope you know what you're getting yourself into and know how to respect it. This man eventually made it back to the top (he was nearly there already!) but it took him another half-hour and ten stops along the way to catch his breath.

Smac and I stuck around a little while longer to make a perfect end to our National Park day by watching the sun set over Lake Michigan. It truly was beautiful and made me realize how much I missed living so close to this awesome place!

Sunset over Lake Michigan

So with three of three of the four National Lakeshores in the National Park System checked off (Pictured Rocks, Indiana Dunes, and Sleeping Bear Dunes), I hope that by the end of the summer I can check off the fourth: Apostle Islands in Wisconsin. Cross your fingers and let's hope!