Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park

I wanted to go to this park the whole time we lived in Michigan. We finally paid a visit on our most recent trip up to Petoskey. The Great Lakes are immense. There are so many interesting and unexpected things to find on their shores. This park is located south of Traverse City. Its name comes from a Native American folk story. The story tells of a mother bear and two cubs who were running through the forest to escape a hunter. When they reached the shore of Lake Michigan, the mother bear sent her cubs in to swim across and stayed behind to keep gaurd on shore. The bear cubs became the Manitou islands, and the mother bear became the great sand dunes.

There is a great drive to do through the park. We really loved it. The kids thought it was especially neat because we didn't make them wear their buckles in the car.
Everything is really sandy- even where the trees are growing. It isn't unusual to see exposed roots.
The largest dune that is accessible by car is a 450 foot slope that drops into the lake. I couldn't get a picture that would give justice to the angle of descent. It is quite steep.





All of the little hikes around the dunes to the different look out places are on these planked walkways. We were glad we stopped!