Happy July 4th everyone! Given the date, I believe I owe y'all an American post, and what's more American than sand dunes, jet skiing, and beaches? (probably a lot of things, shut up).
For my last most recent trip I went to Silver Lake in Mears, Michigan. Silver Lake is a fascinating state park that has forests, lakes, beachfront, and sand dunes all wrapped up in a small region in west Michigan. To get introduced to the area, I started by taking a Mac Woods Dune Rides tour. Our ride was a bit special because we got to take one of the original red cars from the 70's.
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| My Ride |
The tour began by driving from the main road to a forested road that reminded me of West Virginia.
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| First we off-roaded it... |
After we passed through a tunnel of trees, the scenery changed dramatically and before I knew it we were in the middle of barren sand dunes.
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| Suddenly, dunes! |
The Silver Lake sand dunes are the largest alive sand dunes in the western hemisphere. What separates "alive" dunes from "dead" ones is that alive sand dunes do not have deep plant roots in the dunes. Therefore, the dunes are much more mobile than dead dunes, which resist movement due to the entrenched plant roots.
One side effect of this is that the dunes can quickly move and gobble up surrounding environments. For instance, the sand dunes here blew over a forest, and now the only remnants are the remaining sand-blasted tree trunks and roots. I thought the image was pretty chilling (especially if you're a tree), which prompted me to snap the picturesque image below.
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| New desktop background anyone? |
Next our tour guide drove us next to the beach of lake Michigan, which was unnaturally still. No waves to be seen here.
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| Driving next to Michigan Lake |
At the lake, our guide let us off and we walked around the beachfront for a while.
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| Pit Stop |
One fun feature of this rest stop was the greater-than-life Mac Woods beach chair. I used to think everything was bigger in Texas, but now...
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| I guess Michigan has big things too? |
After gathering back in the truck, we saw the live sand dunes swallowing yet another forest. If I was one of those trees, I'd be sapping my trunk.
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| Forest being swallowed by dunes |
For the last part of the tour we drove by the city's namesake, Silver Lake. The lake is pretty fascinating since one half of it is surrounded by forests & homes, while the other half is surrounded by sand dunes.
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| Driving by Silver Lake |
At the end of our tour our guide told us how to see the town lighthouse, so I decided that would be the natural place to go next. Besides, climbing a lighthouse has been something on my bucket list since high school, so this was too good to pass up.
Following the guide's instructions, I found the iconic little lighthouse.
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| Little Sable Point Lighthouse |
Inside there was only room for one tiny metal staircase.
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| Lighthouse Stairs |
At the top I finally had a glimpse of what a lighthouse bulb is supposed to look like. The bulb was actually less interesting than the glass casing around it, which featured particular ridges which focused and directed the light out towards the sea. This design made much more sense than what I expected (a bulb with a rotating mirror).
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| Light-bulb structure |
I also enjoyed the old familiar tingling sensation of looking from a high place when I looked down the 130ft lighthouse.
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| Looking down |
After getting down from the lighthouse, I was ready for some extreme sports, like jet skiing!
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| Wave Club Water Sport Rentals |
I had a great time jet skiing on Silver Lake for an hour. At first I stumbled a lot, even falling off the jet ski after riding parallel to a boat's wake.
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| Silver Lake |
After about thirty minutes though, I was comfortable riding the jet ski. First I managed to stand up (which considerably reduces bumpiness by the way), then I learned to open the throttle. Finally I rode the jet ski at full speed, a whopping 55 miles per hour.
At some point the renters waved at at me and said that I only had ten minutes left. What should I do to end the ride on a grand note? I decided that at 20 years old, my body could probably recover pretty quickly from any stunts that I pulled, so I decided to take advantage of that.
After I had the jet ski running at full speed (55 mph), I decided to fling myself off the jet ski sideways.
First the right side of my body hit the water. This caused me to bounce off the surface like a skipping stone. At 55 mph, water felt a lot more like a solid than a liquid. The force of the impact barrel-rolled me over and when the left side of my body hit the water I thankfully submerged. Once I finally got my head above water and swam to my jet ski, I returned back to shore.
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| Post-festivities |
But I wasn't done with the day yet! The most extreme bit was yet to come. After slamming my body mercilessly into the water, I decided it was time to ride a sand-dune buggy.
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| Let's Buggy |
The first thing I noticed when going out dune buggying was how ridiculously bumpy the ride was. The next thing I noticed was how different the sand looked on the buggy-only side of the dunes versus the people-only side.
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| Notice the sand paterns |
Driving around I also witnessed another forested massacre caused by the live dune menace.
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| Dead Forest |
Talking to other dune-buggy riders, I learned that there were even homes that had to pay upwards of $30,000 to keep the sand from burying their houses. Those sands were merciless!
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| These dunes are on the move. |
The central attraction of the dunes though was Test Hill, a giant dune where cars would drive up at full throttle or else be doomed to stall halfway and be forced to turn around.
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| Test Hill |
After riding around and getting sufficiently comfortable with my little quad (the type of dune buggy I was riding), I went as fast as I could up the hill, and made it!
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| Top of Test Hill |
Thus concludes my Silver Lake adventures. After ridinging around I drove back to Midland and rested my beat up body as much as possible in preparation for the next work day. Until next time!
