Dunes!!!

Last Saturday, Ryan and I went hiking at Warren Dunes State Park in Michigan. This was a new park for us, and we just so happened to show up on a free admission day, so that was extra exciting!

This park really has it all in terms of trail opportunities. It has a number of sand dunes (bet you didn't see that one coming!) you can hike, and from the top, you can see spectacular views. It also has regular trails through wooded areas, and though we desperately wanted to love them, mosquitoes quickly killed that. (More on that in a moment.) It also has about three miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan, so if walking a quieter beach is your happy place, you can do that!

We started with the big dune, because I feared if I didn't knock that one out at the beginning, my legs might knock me out later. My only sadness in capturing this is that you can't really fully appreciate how tall and how straight-up-and-down this dune is unless you're climbing it. (Then you come to appreciate it REAL quick.) I tried different angles, and I came close to capturing it a couple of times, but still...I promise you...however steep you conclude it is, it's really steeper than that.

I believe I read on something that it goes about 260 feet up, but I could be wrong about that. It felt like that (and more) climbing it.

Ryan went first, and he started out running, as he likes to do on dunes, but this one even got a little steep for him to run, and he had to climb at the end. (That made me feel SO much better.)

He was almost to the top before he had to really climb. He's a rock star! And he made it to the top!

If you heard the podcast, you heard about my climb. Gracefulness is not one of my gifts. But please let the record show I did make it to the top, I did not drop my phone or camera in the sand, and I did not get a picture of Malibu Barbie climbing effortlessly next to me.

(Another photo that makes it look like a gentle slope...sigh.)

 Forced to climb - WITH the phone and the camera - and NO pockets.

We interrupt this climb for a leg cramp.

MADE IT!

Hello, little matchbox cars!

The views really were breathtaking. As was the climb.

 Sorry for the backside view. But below is the photo I was taking in the photo above! Picture within a picture!

Going down went SO much faster.

I feel like this photo above came the closest to showing the angle. But still...steeper.

We tried the trails in the woods, but most of them were on lower ground, and there has been so much rain that there were pools and puddles everywhere. Stagnant water, of course, means MOSQUITO-VILLE! And we got eaten alive. It got to the point where it just wasn't fun anymore, so we escaped up a steep trail back to the open dunes, where there was a good breeze and no bugs. (We had two different bug sprays with us and both failed.)

(FYI, that's a puddle over the entire trail. We had to go off the trail into the woods to get around it.)

We ended up on the beach, so we just sat for a while and listened to the waves. (They really were pretty tame for Lake Michigan!)

On our walk back to the parking lot to get our car, we dumped a lot of sand out of our shoes, and passed this really intriguing...I'm not even sure what to call it!

Water was cold! :)

I think we stayed in the park about four hours - maybe a little more. We would have stayed longer if we'd been able to tolerate the interior trails better. We thought it was a really beautiful park, and we would definitely go again if we were in the area!