Mr. Smith got to see the Big Clean Lake or alternatively the Little Clean Ocean as he described Lake Michigan this week. Despite all his family living there, spending all his summers there, and being born there he managed to never see it. So we went to Little Sable Point Light House to see the lake, play in the surf and the sand, and later take a dune ride at Silver Lake.

Believe it or not this is one of the narrowest points between Michigan and Wisconsin just under 60 miles. Yeah big is an understatement. Guess that’s why they call them Great.

I built a little sand village Mr. Smith decided to be an evil giant.

After the lake it was down the road a ways to Mac Woods dune rides.

We had an excellent guide who told us all about the history and ecosystem of the dunes, he was also an excellent driver, it’s quite a roller coaster ride.

Grass was planted by the boy scouts to stabilize some of the dunes. Those parts only drift 2-10 inches a year.

Oh no there goes our ride

It’s ok we made a friend

There is a tiny forest in the middle of the dunes quickly being swallowed up. These trees used to cover all of this land before it was clear cut to rebuilt Chicago after Mrs. O’learys cow decided to be a jackass. It uncovered sandy glacial deposits and voila… Tourism

The live dunes (as opposed to the grassy stabilized dunes) move up to 10 feet a year. You can see on the edge of Silver Lake homes which are being swallowed up by sand. Silver lake itself is also rapidly being filled in by sand.

I’ll have to do another post on “stuff” from Michigan and our journey home just because our time there was jam packed and we came home with quite a few nifty things. I also have a big TBD list that I’m working on that just grew thanks to some hand me down items. So I’ll throw that list and what to look out for in my next post as well.