Sleeping Bear Dunes (7/3/10-7/4/10)
Took a gamble and headed up to Leelanau County hoping to get a July 4 campsite at Sleeping Bear Dunes without a reservation. At park headquarters we were turned away, but regrouped in the parking lot, went back in with some persistence, and wound up with the precise site we wanted. There are six back country sites in the Platte River area under the name White Pines. The walk in from the road is just a little over one mile. Once we packed in and had the tent set up Anna napped while I took a four-mile round trip hike to Bass Lake.
Lake Michigan Shoreline
White Pine is just a few tenths of a mile from the Lake Michigan beach. The shore is beautiful, and because there isn’t any road access, there were relatively few people around. We went swimming in the lake on Saturday afternoon and watched the sunset in the evening, feeling fortunate to have such a great place to visit. On the path between the campsite and lake we saw a very small bird. Anna guessed it was a robin because there was a robin calling nearby. Too small to fly, it was sitting on the ground, swaying softly side to side. When we returned on the same path about an hour later it was gone.
This was a great spot. I’d like to come back, either to this area or perhaps to North Manitou Island.
Tags: backpacking, dunes, sleeping bear, swimming
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 9:58 am and is filed under hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.