Sleeping Bear Dunes

We left at 10 to drive to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  Our first stop was at the Visitor's Center where we watched a movie and got maps for our day.  We used our Senior Pass to get in free.

The movie was done well and showed how the area at one time was covered with glaciers that carved out and filled the Great Lakes and created the sandy dunes and rolling terrain visible and used by us today.  I am not a global warming believer and think taking less than 200 years of facts and applying them to millions of years of evolution is not real smart.  Ohio used to be covered with glaciers.  These two areas alone house, employ and feed millions of people.  I do believe in not littering, clean air, clean water, recycling, etc. but to insist that what we have now is optimum makes no sense.  Where would we be without the Grand Canyon?

Our second stop was an overlook of dunes that dropped WAY down to Lake Michigan.  The sign advised against walkng down the dunes unless you were prepared to spend as much as two hours walking back up or paying the fees associated with being rescued.  Nonetheless, folks were going down.

Tom and Eileen at the overlook.

Next up was the Climb Dune.

Eileen took a stab at the dune but quickly came back when she realized it is a lot higher than it first appears and the sand is hot.

Ted sat down to wait.

We watched many people climb and run down.  It is wise to set this small area aside so folks stay off the rest of the dunes and they are preserved.

We drove on to Glen Haven a small harbor town where the Doll family started a lumber mill, cherry cannery and dune buggy rides.  It is more of an outdoor walking museum now.  This was a fishing tug, the Aloha.

The light trom the lighthouse.

Ted ringing the bell on a buoy.  The wind would toss it at sea to make it ring.  In fog, sometimes it was the only info a sailor had.

A can of Glen Haven cherries.

A snow sled for ice fishing,

A house built in 1857.

Items preserved in the general store.

There was a museum on the Doll family in the rear.  I love reading their life stories.  Even the wealthiest of persons lived a hard life back then.  

We were tuckered out from all the trudging through the sands and up and down the boardwalks.  We did enjoy riding the scenic route through the lovely forest.

I'm always astonished by a forest. It makes me realise that the fantasy of nature is much larger than my own fantasy. I still have things to learn.

Gunter Grass