High on the to-do list once we got to Traverse City was to continue to head west and visit the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
The first stop was at the dune climb….you climb up a big hill of sand and if you’re really ambitious you can take a 3 to 4 hour hike over the sand dunes to Lake Michigan. You can see here Kevin and Matthew at the top of the first dune.
This guy is taking a break on the dune
Of course, once you get to the top of the first dune, there’s another climb to the top of that dune. This view is at the top of that dune looking west…we were given to understand that there were eight or nine more hills like this to get to the Lake.
The boys wanted to at least hike to the top of this hill to see what was beyond…they are the three dots at the bottom of the hill getting ready to climb the hill to the top.
An Iphone panorama looking east at Glen Lake from the top of the first dune.
After roasting in the sun on the dunes, we hopped in the car and did the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. The highlight of this drive was the path/boardwalk that led up to Lake Michigan. This picture is looking north…you can see the steep slope of sand heading down to the lakeshore.
The view to the South, you’ll note some foot traffic going up and down the hill and on the left is the first ‘landing’ down from the path.
The boys down on that first ‘landing’
This boy scurried up the slope from the path
The big boy took the challenge presented at this stop…it’s a 450’ vertical change from the top of the path to the lakeshore…there are multiple warnings about how tough it is coming up. He’s only a dot in this picture, in his white shirt in the middle of the photo on his way down.
Again, he’s still in the center of this photo..he’s the white shirt just above the group of people trying to climb up, he’s still on the way down.
He’s all the way at the bottom here. I’d say it took him 5 minutes to get down. He started up at the same time as three other boys and just blew those kids away…they weren’t halfway up before Kevin had finished. I’d say everyone you saw on that picture below him on the way down he passed on the way back up. Made it up in 15 minutes. An awesome job!
