Lake Michigan Sunset

After dinner on Thursday night, we headed down to the beach to watch the sunset. Here are photos recording it. I hope you like them!

Ludington

Mike and I stayed in on the Wednesday of our vacation, as it was his birthday, and we wanted to relax. I'm now sad that I didn't take any pictures of us just lazing about and him opening his presents. Oh well. On Thursday, we headed south to Ludington to the Ludington State Park, which has some hiking trails and a historic lighthouse. We headed to the lighthouse -- the Big Sable Point Lighthouse -- first.

We climbed up the 130 steps to check out the view from the top. It's pretty nice.

Thanks to these markers, we knew where we were! :-)

I took these on the way down. On the left, you see the actual light that still shines every night on Lake Michigan, since 1867.

We eventually headed into town, got some ice cream, and headed for the public beach. We got to see the Ludington ferry coming from Wisconsin.

Look! Another lighthouse, so we had to go see it up close.

The one drawback about vacationing on our own is that we don't get that many photos of us together. I try to get some, but they all seem to be very similar. Here's my impression of a fly, with these crazy sunglasses that I ended up buying because I forgot mine (and there wasn't any sun out when we left the house).

Well, lookie here, it's the Coast Guard. From what I understand, the Coast Guard's presence on Lake Michigan was boosted somewhat after the 9/11 attacks.

Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore

On Tuesday of our trip, we headed north to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. There is an interesting Native American legend about a mother bear and her two cubs fleeing a fire in Wisconsin by swimming Lake Michigan. However, when she reached the shores of Michigan, she realized that her cubs weren't with her. She waited on the dunes for seasons, called and sang to them. However, they never made it. Instead, they were returned to her in the form of two islands, North and South Manitou Islands, which are visible from the shore.

Lake Michigan is famous for its sand dunes, formed by wind, rain, and ice. Here is one that people were asked not to descend, as it causes erosion. Plus, it was really steep.

You can't even see to the bottom of this dune, as it's so steep. And on the right, you can see people having to get on all fours just to climb up.

Instead, we just enjoyed the scenery for a while. Here you can see one of the Manitou Islands.

Mike had forgotten his hat at home, so he borrowed one from the house where we were staying to protect himself from the sun. It was a beautifully sunny day, but also dangerously sunny for us pale folks.

I thought this was an interesting flower growing in the sand. Bye, bye, crazy-steep dune; we're going to climb a more reasonable one.

Here's the dune we chose to climb. It was strenuous, but not a killer. Here you see the view from the parking lot up and down to the parking lot. It's a pretty popular dune, too.

The view from the dune was pretty nice.

I was pretty pleased to have ascended and then descended the dune.

Mike found a nice tree to rest on after a short hike in another part of the park. This part used to be quite popular with hang gliders.

We even saw a freighter on the Lake.

So, that was our day with the Sleeping Bear. It's a great park, and if you get the chance, you have to see the dunes for yourself!