Fishtown and Sleeping Bear Dunes

A few miles from our camp is the small town of Leland which sits on the shore of Lake Michigan. The town relies heavily on tourism for income and has a downtown area primarily made up of shops. Typical of the towns in the area, flowers are used generously to enhance the visual appeal of the streets and buildings. Here are a couple of examples.



The original town of Leland was known as Fishtown. This indicates the original purpose of the area. Fishtown still exists within Leland and has shops as well as the fish docks. You can charter a fishing excursion right from Fishtown or you can just go to the store and get fish there. The smoked salmon is the best that we have ever tasted. They also have smoked trout and whitefish but we did not try them. There's another small but nice marina adjactent to Fishtown, just like most of the small towns on the peninsula. Here are a couple of photo's of Fishtown.

Our next adventure was a trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. Sleeping Bear Dunes is located near Glen Arbor and, of course, is along the Lake Michigan shoreline. It got it's name from the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians that thought the dune with trees on top looked like a bear. According to Indian lore the mother bear was on the shoreline looking for her two cubs, in the form of the North and South Manitou Islands, that are within sight of the dune.

There is an auto road, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, that passes by several points of interest. Point number 9 is a walking trail that takes you out on top of the dune and has great vistas of the lake. At observation areas along the trail, you are 450 feet above the water of Lake Michigan. One area actually has beach access if you want to descend the dune. The trip back up is tough so the Park Service discourages the adventure. As a matter of fact, upon our arrival at the dune, we were caught up in a small traffic jam due to traffic being held up while the Park Service rescued one such climber that could not make it back to the top. I've included a few photo's of the dune area, but they do not fully illustrate our distance above the water.

The last picture is a barn that is along the main highway in the area. We just thought it was neat so we include it here. There are quite a number of barns in the area but this is one of the best.