Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore ... No Room at the Inn!

On Tuesday we left St. Clair and traveled diagonally across Michigan's lower peninsula to it's northwest corner. We are currently camped at Sleepy Bear Campground, near Empire MI. As Dorcas and I have have attended motor home rallies and conventions, we have collected many offers and coupons for free or discounted camping. Often these offers are in conjunction with opportunities to invest in deeded campsite lots at various resort sites. Such was the case here. The owners of Sleepy Bear Campground were developing an adjacent tract as a luxury motor coach resort to be known as Indigo Bluffs. They let us stay free for four days and three nights at Sleepy Bear, so we would look at Indigo Bluffs, and hopefully be enticed to buy a lot. The hitch was that they were way behind in the construction at Indigo Bluffs, and there really wasn't a lot to see except a raw construction site and a few freshly poured stamped concrete pads. As the sales rep told us, "You have to use your imagination." The folks were very nice, and there was no pressure to buy, or even to look, for that matter. On Friday, our final day at Sleepy Bear, Diana our host, brought us a freshly baked cherry pie. Very nice!

Empire MI is the jumping off point for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Major features include North and South Manitou Islands, 35 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and Sleeping Bear Dune. From Wikipedia:

"The park is named after a Chippewa legend of the sleeping bear. According to the legend, an enormous forest fire on the western shore of Lake Michigan drove a mother bear and her two cubs into the lake for shelter, determined to reach the opposite shore. After many miles of swimming, the two cubs lagged behind. When the mother bear reached the shore, she waited on the top of a high bluff. The exhausted cubs drowned in the lake, but the mother bear stayed and waited in hopes that her cubs would finally appear. Impressed by the mother bear's determination and faith, the Great Spirit created two islands (North and South Manitou Island) to commemorate the cubs, and the winds buried the sleeping bear under the sands of the dunes where she waits to this day. The "bear" was a small tree-covered knoll at the top edge of the bluff that, from the water, had the appearance of a sleeping bear. Wind and erosion have caused the "bear" to be greatly reduced in size over the years. Today only a small remnant remains."

On Wednesday we toured parts of the park north of Empire. We took the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive which offers outstanding views of Lake Michigan, Sleeping Bear Dune and the Manitou Islands. We walked out on a high bluff dune where visitors were sliding 200' down to the shore of Lake Michigan. It didn't look like much fun coming back up however; one step forward, two steps back! Matilda had big fun playing in all the sand. I think she expected us to scold her for digging and was surprised that we let her go on. We visited the town of Glen Arbor and scouted the Crystal River, an excellent paddling venue.

On Thursday we visited the Maritime Museum at the Coast Guard Station at Glen Haven. There we toured the museum and watched a live demonstration showing how sailors were evacuated from a ship stranded off the beach. Most of the beaches in the park are dog-free, but there is a section of beach here that allowed dogs. Matilda again had big fun playing in the waves and digging in the sand. When we had scouted the Crystal River the day before it was wall-to-wall kayaks, canoes and tubers; a very popular run. It was a very pretty river and we wanted to run it, so we decided to run it late in the afternoon. The Crystal River heads up in Glen Lake only about two miles from it's outlet in Lake Michigan, as the crow flies, but meanders about 8 miles from its source to its mouth. We did a section that was probably about 6 miles long, but the bike shuttle was only 1.1 miles, due to loops in the river. The river is very shallow, mostly less than one foot deep, and crystal clear. We put on at 5:00 PM, and there were only a few boaters on the river at that time. We finished up about 8:00 after a very leisurely float. We had two portages, one around a small dam and the other over a road culvert. We were able to duck low and paddle through one other culvert.

On Friday we had hoped to move over to the Platte River Campground, one of two federal campgrounds in the park and the only one with electric service. Both campgrounds are full every day and fill new vacancies at 8:00 each morning. We arrived at 6:30 AM hoping to get a spot, but found a long line of hopeful campers at the ranger station. The sign at the station said there would be 14 sites available that morning: 2 electric, 8 non-electric and 4 walk-in sites. There were 8 motor homes and travel trailers in the parking lot before we arrived, so we knew we would not get an electric site. They don't allow generator use, and we couldn't last 4 days without power, so we didn't want a non-electric site, even if we could get one. We figured our best chance was for one of the walk-in sites, which would probably go last. We had already scouted the walk-in sites and decided that they would work for us, at least for one night, then we could get a transfer site. Transfers are handled before they assign sites to new campers; campers already on a site, but who want to change their site, go to the head of the line. If we got a walk-in site, we could not sleep in the motor home, but there was a sunny place to park it, so the solar array would keep it charged up. We have a tent, sleeping bags, a cook stove and every thing we need to use the walk-in sites. Not an ideal arrangement, but workable. Well, it didn't work out that way. At 8:00, the rangers gave out numbers to those in line and began registering campers. Our number was 16. Remember there were 14 sites available? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math. The two electric sites went down in about 10 seconds. We hoped that at least two parties ahead of us would get disgusted and leave, but it didn't happen. No. 14 got the last site. Dang. Ironically, the party behind us, No. 17 had handicapped credentials and got the handicapped site, which wasn't one of the original 14. We rushed back to Sleepy Bear to see if they had space for us to stay another night or two, but they were booked solid for the weekend, and we would have to leave. Where would we go? A busy summer weekend at a popular national park? No room at the inn!

To be continued ....