Michigan Trip Day 2

We awoke Saturday morning on Fife Lake to rain showers. By 9 am the rain had stopped and there seemed to be some clouds breaking up. The radar showed no more rain coming for quite a while so we decided to head off to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore to see the sand dunes. Our first stop was were a small river enters lake Michigan. By the time we arrived the sun had broken out and it was about 70 degrees. The kids got right into the water and after a few minutes were completely submerged. The water was quite warm but the lake was much colder. It was fun to stand right in the waters where the river and lake waters were mixing and feeling the changing temperatures around your legs.

We traveled about 20 minutes north to the main areas of the national lakeshore which has the big sand dunes. Here you can see a large areas behind us of sand dunes in different stages of their life.
This was the most impressive sight of the day. Here we are on the observation deck looking down a 400+ foot high sand dune rising out of Lake Michigan. Click on the picture for the bigger version and you can see that there are people that have slid all the way down the dune to the shore. There are warning signs that it can take more than an hour to walk back up the dune. The steepness of this dune and the height are hard to get accross in a picture but we were all amazed. When we first arrived we couldn't even see the beach at first and it looked like the sand just dropped off. I was afraid the kids would fall and roll all the way down. This area is above the steepest part of the dune. Those two tiny kids to the right are Anna and Andrew.
Lots of fund jumping down the dunes into a good stiff headwind


That is little Elijah down there tryinig to climb up this dune. He actually went up and down this one 3 or 4 times. I don't know how he could walk after all that but he continued to run around. From the sand dune we went over to Traverse City which was very nice and had dinner. Then headed back to the house. We got back about 5 and the weather was still very nice. The kids got the swimming suits back on and started jumping off the dock into the lack and playing with the boat.