Sleeping Bear Dunes

We have a secret. Soon we will be moving to Florida! (I guess it isn’t really a secret anymore, huh?) Since we have limited time remaining in the Midwest, we decided to make memorial day weekend into an extra long weekend and go camping at one of our favorite places, Sleeping Bear Dunes. (Check out our previous trip’s blog post)

We stayed at the Platte River Campgrounds, and it was one of the nicest campsites I’ve ever been to. We arrived late on Wednesday night because we were told the campgrounds would start filling up quickly on Thursday. Since the office was already closed, we drove around and picked our favorite spot. (We settled up with the rangers the following morning). There are 3 types of spots, walk up, drive up, and electric. We looked at the walk up spots but then opted for a drive up spot simply due to convenience. There are lots of the drive up spots that have plenty of privacy, but be sure to make sure you aren’t next to one of the trails! Otherwise people will always be walking next to your site. Each spot has a tent pad that is extremely level, a fire pit, and a picnic table. If you didn’t pick up firewood on the way, the campgrounds has a firewood vending machine which is pretty much the coolest thing ever.

After we set up our campsite, we were famished. Nisheet had the awesome idea of pre-making a pizza log, and it turned out fantastically. You start with pizza dough, top it with your favorite ingredients (we used pizza sauce, cheese, dried basil, and a few chopped veggies), roll it up, cut some slits in it, wrap it in foil, and then pop it in the freezer. It keeps your cooler cool and is thawed out in time to throw it in the fire. Keep moving it around and after about 30 minutes or so you have a very tasty dinner!

For our first day in the dunes, we decided to go on a dune hike. On our previous trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes, we did the Dunes Trail which leads you across the dunes to Lake Michigan. We had a lot of fun hiking over the dunes, so I wanted to do something similar and picked out the Sleeping Bear Point Trail. Unfortunately, one of the rangers informed us the trail was closed because of nesting piping plovers. Oh well. We settled for the Pyramid Point Trail. The trail starts out in a meadow, enters a forests, and then dumps you out on a huge dune overlooking the lake. The trail itself wasn’t particularly memorable, but the view at the end was spectacular.

Since it was still fairly early in the day when we finished the short hike, we headed over to Cherry Republic for a piece of cherry pie and some wine tasting. If you like cherries, you will love the store. It has cherry everything! Cherry salsa, cherry jam, cherry trail mix, cherry bbq sauce, cherry peanut butter, etc.  And, the best part is you can sample a ton of the products.

Since the supposedly closed Sleeping Bear Point Trail was on our way back to the campgrounds, Nisheet decided to stop at the parking lot just to see if the trail was indeed closed. The ranger lied to us. The trail was closed to DOGS not humans! What?! Luckily we had enough daylight hours left to complete the trail, so that is exactly what we did. It was beautiful and the scenery was surprisingly varied. The trail went through a little forest, up dunes, down dunes, and even through a ghost forest. And, of course, there were stunning views of the lake.

We finished the hike quicker than I expected, so we had just enough time to take the scenic drive and stop at the HUGE Sleeping Bear Dunes that everyone wants to see on the way back. I am always amazed at how huge the dune is no matter how many times I visit.