Down the Lake Michigan Shore (14 July)

After a night’s stay at the best hotel of my trip (a Best Western in Traverse City, MI), I headed for the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I’d wanted to visit here on the trip two years ago, but I was rained out. Once again, the weather was the best possible.

I started by visiting what was called a Maritime Museum; it wasn’t really open yet, but I was able to walk on the beach for a while and enjoy the views.

From there, I headed into more of the park proper and opted to do a scenic drive which had several stops for walking and photos. The first was at an overlook, with good views of both the Lake and some of the dunes.

The other photo stop was to walk along the top of the dunes. You can’t easily tell from these photos, but getting too close to the edge of this dune would provide a quick and far-too-exciting slide almost straight down to the water, roughly 200′ below! Fortunately, there was such a strong wind blowing in from the lake that it was easy to stay back from the edge 🙂

The last picture from this location is of Wisconsin! It’s only 54 miles away, but is hidden by the curvature of the earth 🙂

I continued down the coast, stopping one more time at an overlook for a few more pictures, the last for this trip.

I stopped in Battle Creek for the night and had an excellent meal (and drinks) at a German-inspired brewpub, Territorial Brewing. It was fabulous!