Sleeping Bear Dunes

It really wasn’t our intent to travel as far north along the lakeshore as the Traverse City area, but when I discovered we would be in the neighborhood at the end of National Park Week and the entrance fee to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore would be waived (we like free!), Tracey and I concurred a detour was in order. We both have National Parks Passports, and this particular site has four different cancellation stations. While visiting in shoulder season means rubbing elbows with less people, it unfortunately also means that many of the locations were not yet open. We decided to simply travel the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive and call it good.

Pierce Stocking spent his youth working as a lumberman in Michigan’s forests. He used to walk the bluffs above Lake Michigan and conceived the idea of a road to the top of the dunes to share their beauty with others. The road first opened in 1967, and Stocking continued to operate it until his death in 1976. A year later, when it became part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, public opinion directed it be renamed the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.

The 7.1-mile route offers stunning views of land and water, picnic areas and hiking trails. Our first stop was at the covered bridge, one of the picturesque details that Stocking included in his scenic drive. Though covered bridges are usually associated with New England and Pennsylvania, several are located in Michigan as well. They were developed to protect wooden bridges from the elements which could rot the timbers; it was cheaper to repair the roof than to build a new bridge. Interestingly, when this bridge was originally built, the sides were consumed by porcupines!

The Sleeping Bear Dunes cover an area of four square miles and are estimated to be 2,000 years old. The Chippewa Indians used the Bear as a landmark and told this story to explain its origin:

Long ago, along the Wisconsin shoreline, a mother bear and her two cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by a raging forest fire. The bears swam for many hours, but eventually the cubs tired and lagged behind. Mother bear reached the shore and climbed to the top of a high bluff to watch and wait for her cubs. But the cubs drowned within sight of the shore. The Great Spirit Manitou created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs disappeared and then created a solitary dune to represent the faithful mother bear.

Overlooks not only provide a panorama of the Bear, but the Lake Michigan shoreline as well. Lake Michigan is the largest lake completely within the United States and the fourth largest fresh-water lake in the world. It also has a profound influence on the formation of sand dunes.

A dune is simply a pile of sand deposited by the wind. In some places dune fronts advance over a few feet per year and in others they are stabilized by plants and show no motion. Beachgrass is among the first plants to grow on newly built dunes, and the cottonwood is the only common tree of the dunes. They typically grow in clusters and reproduce by sprouting new trunks from roots. The network of roots helps to hold the sand in place.

Though we are in spring mode at home, the Sleeping Bear Dunes are farther north and just awakening. Since this area is one of my favorite places in Michigan, a return trip later this summer when things are in full swing is definitely in order.