After leaving the Mackinaw area of Michigan we headed over to the Lake Michigan side of the lower peninsula to visit Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The lake water in this area was such an amazingly beautiful shade of turquoise blue!
There is so much to see along this lakeshore. We started with the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive on 4th of July weekend, and it wasn’t even crowded. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing about this because it’s nice to still have some national parks to go to that are not super crowded.
The next day which was the actual 4th of July holiday we hiked the Dune Climb. Oh my goodness, this was so hard! It was 4 miles total (2 miles to Lake Michigan and back) which doesn’t seem like much, but it was on sand dunes, barefoot, and uphill both ways. 😉 At least it seemed like it to me.
We made it to the lake but that was only half of the hike, we still had to walk the 2 miles back to the parking lot. I wrongly assumed the hike back would be easier because it seemed like we climbed uphill the whole way to get there. For some strange reason it was also uphill going back. This was seriously a very hard hike and I’m so thankful it was cloudy. This might have been miserable on a hot & sunny day.
Later in the week we went to Pyramid Point which is a short & easy hike with a gorgeous viewpoint.
After that we had an ice cream break at Cherry Republic. This area is well known for cherries so the cherry ice cream was delicious!
The last activity on that day was a hike to Sleeping Bear Point which involved more hiking on sand dunes, but not nearly as much as the 4th of July hike.
We ended our visit to this area with a short hike on the Empire Bluff Trail to yet another spectacular viewpoint of Lake Michigan. I could never get tired of looking at these beautiful views!
We stayed at Indigo Bluffs RV Resort in Empire, MI which is only a few miles from Sleeping Bear Dunes and a great place to stay. I didn’t take a lot of pictures at the RV park, but I loved the wildflowers growing at our site so I at least took some pictures of those.
4 Radical Roadschoolers and a Fat Cat 