United States
Sleeping Bear Dunes
Sand bluffs four hundred and fifty feet tall plunging into Lake Michigan's turquoise shallows.
The bluff edge drops four hundred and fifty feet of bare sand straight down to water the colour of the Caribbean, which is not what anyone expects from the Midwest. Behind it, the Dune Climb swallows your feet to the ankle with every step, and the lake at the top stretches wind-whipped and impossibly blue to the horizon.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore protects miles of sand beach, forests and clear inland lakes along Michigan's northwestern shore, its perched dunes sitting on glacial bluffs that tower 450 feet above Lake Michigan. The Dune Climb is a wall of loose sand climbed for the panorama and descended at a run; the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive delivers the same views through the windscreen. The Empire Bluffs Trail reaches a high wooden platform over the lake in under an hour, an easy walk with an unreasonable payoff. All of it sits inside the Leelanau Peninsula's cherry and wine country, a region that grows three quarters of America's tart cherries.
Family
Children race up the Dune Climb and roll back down it all afternoon, and the shallow beaches at the platted lake edges warm enough for real swimming by high summer.
Friends
Climb the dunes in the morning, swim off a sand beach at noon and finish in a Leelanau tasting room with cherry wine as the sun drops behind the bluffs.
Couple
Walk the Empire Bluffs boardwalk at sunset for the long view over the lake, then eat in Leland's old fishing village as the gulls argue over the river mouth.
- The lakeshore's bluffs tower 450 feet above Lake Michigan, bare sand meeting water so clear it reads turquoise from the rim.
- The Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive loops through the dune complex to overlooks that need no hiking at all.
- The Empire Bluffs Trail reaches a clifftop platform above the lake in under an hour, one of the easiest big views in the Midwest.
- The surrounding Leelanau Peninsula grows three quarters of the nation's tart cherries, with orchards and tasting rooms minutes from the sand.
Cherry pie from a roadside orchard stand in Leelanau country, which grows three quarters of America's tart cherries.
Smoked whitefish from the weathered shanties of Leland's Fishtown, a working fishing village on the river mouth.
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