Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan

Voted as the most beautiful spot in America, these sand dunes on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan are pretty. So I asked Shelley, why sand dunes? Naturally as we are cruising down the coastline, she googles the geology of Lake Michigan, and voila its the glaciers. 16 million years ago, the glaciers dug out the Great Lakes, and covered this entire area with over a thousand feet of ice. As it melted it left the Glacial Drift, ie sand across the lakes and the land of Michigan. The lakes then pushed the sand up into sand dunes over millions of years, and formed these beautiful bluffs.

Navigation here is pretty easy. We take the boat about a mile offshore, and head south. We have been in 600 ft. depths of the lake, just a mile offshore. The biggest issue is the weather forecast. We look at three different sources of weather for the lake, and natually they each have a different forecast. I do not want to go out into Lake Michigan in seas greater than 3 ft. and winds in excess of 15-20. The prevailing wind is from the west, so when we are going south, that makes a beam sea. Not much fun with a 3 ft sea off the starboard side. So if that is the forecast, we stay inshore.

Fortunately Michigan has a harbor of refuge or a protected anchorage about every 25 miles as you go down the coast. Many of these are pretty villages that are set back from the Lake, inside protected seawalls. We have stayed at quite a few of these villages. Each has numerous marinas and cater to the boating community, which is quite large in the summertime. These last three nights we have stayed in Pentwater, MI. These folks make their living off the high season of boating, and they are good at it. Lots of small shops, restaurants, bars, and all the things that tourists need and want. Beautiful little town.

Tomorrow we head 60 miles further down the coast to Grand Haven. This is a small village where the Grand River runs into the Lake, just down from Grand Rapids, Michigan. We will be in South Haven by the end of the week, preparing to cross the bottom of Lake Michigan to Chicago. That will be another major landfall for us as we reach the end of the Great Lakes, and head into the inland river systems of the US. I am ready for the next major adventure of this trip....the rivers. Marc