Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan

We left Indiana and made our way north to Nichigan. We have a long Holiday weekend coming up and so I had done some research to find somewhere with first come first serve spots so we could snag a spot before the weekend. Platte River Campground is a national forest campground up near Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshosre. All the reservable sites are taken for the weekend but they have a loop with first come first serve. It is aways up and so we ended up doing two overnight spots on our way there. One of the reasons didn't want to drive more than a few hours was that Joe started feeling bad on Saturday with a cough and what ended up being a cold and I followed a few days later. Oh bummer, our first cold in over 4 years. Anyway, Tuesday we pulled into Platte River Campground, a lovely wooded area in the lower pennisula of Michigan in the southern are of Sleeping Bear Dunes. It is within walking distance of the Platte River and within a few miles of Lake Michigan.

Looking out our window

Lots of hiking, biking and boating available in this area. Of course, we are not feeling well and so didn't do much more than walks around the campground. No tv this week and so lots of reading on our kindles, plus we did have internet.

We did take a drive on the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in the Sleeping Bear Dunes area.  You first drive through a covered bridge which was basically built for sightseers to enjoy and take a photo, which I did.

We drove by Glen Lake. Actually there are two Glen Lakes separated by a causeway. Big Glen Lake is up to 130 feet deep in places and Little Glen Lake only 12 feet deep.

There are a number of lookouts to take in the views.

The Sand Dunes are of course, part of the big draw.The road goes by the Dunes area, then through a beech and  maple tree forest, by Lake Michigan and by more dunes.

We did take a short walk to take in more views. The bluff goes down to the water's edge. It is a hard walk back to any who walk down to the water.

The water colors are amazing.

It's a little hard to see the iconic landform that gave this place its name as the sleeping bear form has been eroded by winds or the years. 

A nice day in Michigan. We had mostly nice days with a little rain one day. We did some shopping in Grand Traverse.
When we got here we had just signed up for one day and the next morning Joe went to sign up for a few more days. We wanted to check out another forest campground. We haven't adjusted to Eastern Time and have been sleeping in until 10 or 11 in the morning. We almost lost our spot. Joe had let a woman go before him into the office and he heard her try to sign up for our spot as they had already removed our tag. Joe said that is my spot and we are signing up for more days, which he was able to do. That was close. We would have been able to get another spot but would have had to pack up, bring in the slides,etc. A pain to move a few sites over. Later that day, we stopped on our way back to the campground and signed up through the weekend until Tuesday. We had a nice week and are both on the mend from our colds. Hopefully we will get onto the water on our further adventures in Michigan.