Silver Lake Sand Dunes

The Silver Lake Sand Dunes. If you're from mid-Michigan, chances are you've visited Silver Lake. It's entire west side is dunes. These dunes cover about 1.5 miles to Lake Michigan.

The dunes are divided into three parts. The north part is for the dune buggies. You need a state park vehicle sticker, and a vehicle that will go up in sand. This picture is of the north side. On both the left and right ridges you can see specks that are actually vehicles lined up ready to take the plunge down the dunes.

The middle section is for hikers. The southern section is leased by Mac Woods dune scooters, the people who took us on our dune ride.

Click through for larger size (you can tell the ants are vehicles) or to see pics from the dune ride.

It is Hard to Explain about the Great Lakes

They're big. They show up on almost any world map, they are that big, defining Michigan's mitten shaped lower peninsula and the UP shaped upper peninsula. I swiped this from here:

From the westernmost tip of Lake Superior at Duluth, Minnesota, to the easternmost tip of Lake Ontario at Watertown, New York, the five lakes stretch a thousand miles across the heartland of both the United States and Canada, creating nearly 9,500 miles of ocean-like shores. The lakes also contain an estimated 35,000 islands.

Officially dubbed "the nation's fourth seacoast," the U.S. Great Lakes shoreline alone totals more than 4,500 miles -- longer than the U.S. East and Gulf coasts combined. As seen from space, the Great Lakes constitute one of the most identifiable features of the North American continent as well as our planet Earth.

The North American Great Lakes are unique among the world's large lakes in that their basins are linked together and form one continuous drainage basin. Together, they constitute the greatest freshwater system on Earth, covering an area larger than Texas and about half the size of Alaska. Starting in Lake Superior, the water flows out the lake's southeastern tip down the St. Marys River into Lakes Michigan and Huron, which actually are two halves of one lake. From there, the water flows southward from the southern tip of Lake Huron down the St. Clair River through "little" Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie. Leaving Lake Erie, it flows north via the Niagara River and over Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario. It then flows northeast down the St. Lawrence River -- the last link in a 2,000-mile-long waterway that ultimately connects Minnesota to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Great Lakes support most ocean size vessels. They do often freeze over in winter, though, as they are fresh water, and this curtails the shipping a lot.

Most people, when seeing one of them for the first time, cannot believe their size. I guess we just don't do a good enough job selling them!

Where I Was Yesterday

Little Sable Lighthouse, Oceana County, Michigan

Michigan, with its borders on 4 of the 5 Great Lakes, has the most lighthouses of any of the states in the United States.