July 16, 2010

July 16, 2010

Today we backtracked south to the Sleeping Bear Dune National Lakeshore Visitor Center where we perused the exhibits and watched the park film. The shoreline here (and all along Lake Michigan) is the remnant of the glaciers bulldozing a channel past here during the last Ice Age. The prevailing winds then pile up deep layers of sand on the hills to form dunes.

Afterwards we drove the nearby seven-mile scenic route up to the top of Sleeping Bear dune. Along the way we got out and stretched our legs on the Cottonwood trail hiking up and down grass-covered dunes. At Sleeping Bear the dune fell away almost vertically several hundred feet down to the Lake. A handful of the younger and more energetic tourists ran down the dune in mere seconds. The return hike back up probably took an hour. The fact that Aimee easily talked me out of doing it is a testament to me getting older or wiser, not sure which.

We are thinking about taking the ferry out to South Manitou Island just offshore and also part of the National Park. Looking at the map I often thought of them as desolate, isolated and never inhabited. The truth is just the opposite. The offshore islands and the coast were actually the first places to be colonized. In olden days waterways were the highways. The coastal islands were a focal point for the timber industry providing fuel for passing steamships and lumber for building towns (e.g. Chicago) and western forts. When ships switched to coal, the local economy died, and was soon replaced with tourism. In fact, the campground we are staying at was the site of Michigan’s first state park.