Our next stop is Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Empire, Michigan. There are stunning water views on our drive to the park. We drive right along the lake and it’s a shimmering blue green color. Really beautiful. This is the stop of climbing giant orange sand dunes and taking some beautiful scenic drives.
We camp in the park at the Platte River Campground, which has an electric hookup but no water or sewer. It is a pretty campground in the woods with lots of trees and spacious sites that are not to close to your neighbor. This is our first time ever camping without water and sewer hook ups. Soon we will be dry camping (without any hookups) but this is our first test. We come prepared with our water tank full, which was completely unnecessary, as we could have filled up on the way in.
We are in a leafy green campsite, not too close to our neighbors. However, there are plentiful mosquitoes, even during the day. We manage to back in our site without too much drama, set up camp and then DT notices that one of the truck tires look low so he checks the pressure (one of our best purchases was this tire pressure pump). The tire not only looks low, it IS low. Probably due to the enormous screw that we find embedded in the tire! Ugh! Not how we planned to kick off our visit. Fortunately, we have internet service at the campground. At the time, we did not realize how lucky we were, strong internet in NPS campgrounds is rare. A quick search on the smartphone locates a tire store – only 15 minutes away. We call, they tell us to come right in. We load into the truck and they are able to remove the screw and patch the tire in a half an hour. We are thrilled that it has worked out so smoothly.
The next day, we drive over to the sand dunes on the shores of Lake Michigan. Our first stop is The Dune Climb. It is impressive; towering mounds of orange sand in hot shining sun. Elle goes sprinting up the hill and then joyfully hurtles herself down the dune – running at top speed in the soft sand. She runs so fast that she she falls forward and belly flops down the dune! We hike into the dunes for views of Lake Michigan. Our shoes fill with sand and it’s hot in the sun but it’s beautiful. We wish we had gotten an earlier start so we could have hiked all the way out to Lake Michigan but it’s a three to four hour hike and it is now hot… and time for lunch. Instead we hike about a half hour out into the dunes, then turn back, with Elle making multiple stops to empty sand from her shoes.
We drive back into the tiny town of Empire and get cherry tuna fish sandwiches for lunch along with cherry barbecue chips at the Village Inn. We are in cherry country.
We decide to take the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive – a seven-mile loop drive. It has various stops with views of the dunes, Glen Lake and Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is various shades of turquoise – just stunning. We hiked the Empire Bluff Trail (1.5 miles) out to the steep wall of sand that drops into clear blue waters of Lake Michigan.
We stop back at the visitor center for Elle to submit her Junior Ranger book and earn her badge. A successful day. We return to the campground at dusk to find the mosquitoes in increased numbers and swarming in thick clouds! We opt to eat dinner inside our Airstream, and stare in wonder at our neighbors, out grilling and eating among the clouds of bugs.
We leave the next day, our water easily lasted for our two nights of camping and our gray and black tanks had plenty of capacity. Which is good, because later in the trip we will have to stretch it out for six nights!