Friday, August 2, 2024
We left you Tuesday in Ludington, MI at the close of our last entry. Tuesday afternoon we decided to head up to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore. If you are looking at a map, we were just working our way further north along the western shore of Lake Michigan. It was a cloudy, gloomy drive most of the way except for the times when it was raining. There was a silver lining. The rain brought a significant drop in the temperature – to the upper 60’s. You all know we go north to get away from the heat but it hasn’t worked so well this year. Tuesday afternoon was a real blessing.
We knew before we left Ludington that the northern Sleeping Bear campground was full. However, it looked like there were still one or two sites available at the southern Platte River Campground. We just had bad connectivity and could never get a reservation made. We had Gumby with us, so we just drove the two hours or so to Platte River. Asked the Ranger for a one night stay and she said, “Let me grab it for you because I’ve only got one left.” The site was ours. We love traveling spontaneously!
After getting checked in, we decided we would head to the visitor center located in Empire. There we picked up our maps, stamped our passport book and then headed into the park. The Ranger recommended that we first drive the scenic loop which we did. First stop was for a covered bridge. Nice. Of note, the height of the bridge was raised to 13’ 6” when they had to replace the side boards because the porcupines ate them. Seemed the porcupines preferred the man-made structures more than the native wood of the forest. From the bridge there were eleven other stops on the drive. Overlooks of lakes, dunes, a drive thru the cottonwood trees, the beech maple forest, a pine plantation etc. The stop of most interest to many was the Sleeping Bear Overlook (doesn’t look like a bear anymore). Here you are at the top of a really, really, tall sand dune. At the bottom of the dune is Lake Michigan. The sand is extremely fine, hot, and difficult to walk. The signs warn people to not go down the dune because if you must be rescued it is a minimum $3,000 bill. Of course, people go down it every day, and for young, healthy people, while it is an exhausting climb back up, they make it back to the top without problems. We choose to not push our luck since we had made the very difficult climb at Indiana Dunes a week earlier. There is a second dune for people to climb that looked almost as tall as the Sleeping Bear Dune but the second dune you began at the bottom and climb up as high as you can or want, and then turn around and come back down, thereby avoiding needing to be rescued and the $3,000.00 charge. There are a lot of other things to do in the park. There are many interesting, preserved buildings to tour, trails to hike and beautiful scenery.
After the dunes, we went back to the Platte river campground and asked for two more nights. They had had a new cancellation and we were in for a total of three days. We needed some time to rest. We also had to move BB out to a place beside the Platte river on Wednesday night so we could have connectivity for our Bible study. Thursday we did some touring of the area outside the park, but that’s information for another blog entry.
RVing With a Purpose 