Sleeping Bear Dunes

Sleeping Bear Dunes was voted "Most Beautiful Place in America" by the viewers of Good Morning America in 2011.  I don't know if I would characterize this as the "most beautiful" place, but it was very interesting.

The girls posed like angry bears, not sleeping bears!

At first I was unsure if we could make it all the way to the other side of the dunes, but we decided to give it a try since this might be the only time we do this.  The dune climb/hike takes about 3 hours to complete, round trip.  It was definitely hard but we did it!

The landscape was so strange... it felt like we were on another planet!

Beautiful Lake Michigan was waiting on the other side of our climb.

The girls wanted to stay and play longer in the water, but we knew it was going to be a long hike back, so we only stayed for about 20 minutes.

Although this picture is very blurry, I still loved it enough to post it here.  It was a great family day!  I don't have a better picture of the girls together on the dunes, so this will have to do.

 Two of us are over 40 and two of us are preteens... it was decidedly easier for the preteens to make it up and down and up and down and up and down these sandy hills...