The United States recently finished its hottest summer ever, and the whole country was hit with a record-breaking heat wave a couple weeks ago. Northern Michigan was no exception, and we had highs in the 100s a couple days. Not nearly as bad as what they experienced further south, but about 30 degrees hotter than what I'm comfortable with. The hottest day of the summer so far also happened to be my day off, so I decided to take a day trip to the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, a tourist hotspot right in the middle of the Sleeping Bear Dunes.
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| The view from the walkway |
Really the only spot on the drive worth visiting (in my opinion) the final stop, where one can walk onto the dunes themselves, and there's a nice walkway built on the bluff, hanging over the water. I didn't bother too much with the walkway, but I did take the opportunity to get off the beaten path and explore the undeveloped part of the dunes. Most people are fine staying on the path, and there's really no reason to stray off unless you like taking pictures, or unless you want a glimpse of what the dunes look like without having thousands of sweaty feet trampling all over them.
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| Something like this. |
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| An extra-large panorama of the dunes. |
It's really hard, maybe even impossible, to express the full scale of the dunes. The beach isn't actually visible in this picture, or any of the other pictures; instead, there's an enormous bluf that drops down about 400 feet into the lake. I couldn't really express in pictures or words how truly huge that feels, just sit on the edge and experience it for myself. As a very wise person said to me once, sometimes it's best just to experience things without taking pictures.
It gets very, very hazy with all the heat, and that did lead to some very surreal effects with the sun and the water; it's really, really hard to figure out where the sea ends and the sky begins. It was also apparently too hot for some people; as I was walking back to my car, I saw two ambulances in the parking lot, loading someone on with a stretcher. Always stay hydrated, kids!
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