The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore visitor center is in Empire, Michigan. We stopped there to get a map of the park and to see their exhibits. We were told the campground that has electrical hookups had five spaces left a half-hour previously but the one with no hookups had twenty-seven spaces still open. Since we want to start our visit to this park by seeing the Coast Guard Station Museum and it is by the no hookups campground near the north end of the park, we decided to go there since it was too late in the day to see the museum now.
It turned out the D. H. Day Campground is also a popular place but we got in early enough to have our pick of spaces. The sites are close to one another with some brush between them but people were quiet so even having young children on both sides of us turned out to not be a problem.
The Coast Guard Station Museum doesn’t open until 11 a.m. We actually made it there about 11:30.
This is a cool place. I highly recommend a stop here.
Back before the formal organization of the U.S. Coast Guard there was a lifesaving station here to protect ships that foundered trying to make their way through the pass.
A rescue boat could be sent sent to help. It held a six to eight man crew wearing cork life vests.
If the ship was close enough to shore, a small cannon was used to fire a line to the ship. That was part of a “Breeches buoy” setup that was used to haul sailors to shore.
For those of you who lived in the Twin Cities back in the day–here’s the original weather ball.
And a statement that made me think about why I don’t like boats.
Our next stop was the Dune Climb. This is a national park. You are not supposed to climb the dunes. But people always will do so. This place had the sense to provide an authorized spot for this activity.
What you can’t see from here is that this huge dune is only the first ridge. You have to climb a second one to actually be able to see Lake Michigan. I suspect few people do the second climb but the people we watched climbing were mostly having fun. Only the ones who were still trying to figure out how they would get back down looked like maybe they weren’t having such fun. I saw one guy rolling down the hill but he didn’t look like he was enjoying it. In the movie we watched about this place the ones that looked like they were having fun coming down were sliding on the seats of their pants. I wonder if their pants still had a seat by the time they reached the bottom? We, of course, didn’t go up. We’re too decrepit to enjoy that type of activity anymore.
Then we took the 7 mile scenic drive. Here’s some scenes from that trip.
We finished that day by checking in to the Platte River campground–the one with electrical hookups. It was a long day and we were ready to rest.
TTYL,
Linda
