Sleeping Bear Dunes, November, 2002.


The Great Lakes have not let us down yet. The three largest of the five (Superior, Huron, and Michigan) are fantastic. The gang has done backcountry camping trips next to each of these lakes now, and they've all been excellent trips. There's just something about a large body of water. I love the fact that they look like oceans, and yet they're fresh water. While I'm sure we've nicely upped our heavy metal counts the water does taste great (filtered of course).

Sleeping Bear Dunes is located at the northwest part of Lower Michigan. On the pinky as they say (since Michigan looks like a hand with the thumb over in Huron, and the pinky in Michigan). Rob got all our permits and first-night hotel lined up. We started out Sunday, and camped out in beautiful 40 degree weather (the absolutely best temp IMO) for two nights. Then we headed back home on Tuesday.

SBD is not quite as remote as The Bruce, but this has actually been the first time that we've done backcountry camping along Michigan. The dunes were new for us (though we've all done beach camping along Superior near Marquette [Upper] Michigan). The only downside was it was hunting season, and we did hear a few shotgun blasts off in the distance. But it wasn't too bad, and on our Monday day hike down the beach the wind was howling so hard that we wouldn't have heard a fog horn if it was 100 feet away.

All in all it was another great trip.

Rob's and Chris's pics are available on Rob's Excursions site, or by clicking here.