Hiking at Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan (+ burgers & ice cream in Traverse City!)

we're not even up the first hill already tired [Music] after road tripping across michigan's upper peninsula where we hiked in the porcupine mountains learned mining history on the keweenaw peninsula saw some of the clearest and bluest water of our lives chased waterfalls and tried an iconic local food item we've crossed the mackinac bridge to experience the lower peninsula of michigan and for our final adventure in michigan we're heading to sleeping bear dunes which is a 71 000 acre park located on the shores of lake michigan for a day of hiking gorgeous scenery and local eats nearby [Music] [Applause] first up we're doing the dune climb which is a 3.6 mile hike over the sand dunes all the way to lake michigan while the trail is just the dunes there are these posts here with the blue tops to help guide you there so a few important things to know about this hike some parts of the park are dog friendly but this hike is not so cona is sitting this one out also we hear this it's hard to walk on his hand we hear that this hike gets really really busy and it also gets really hot when the sun's just beating down on the sand because there's no cover at all so we're getting a very early start to beat the heat and the crowds [Music] so i started this hike wearing shoes and fully expecting them to be basically buckets of sand by the end of this but i read that you could uh go barefoot which would be comfortable and the sands nice and cool so that's what we did but if you do that make sure you do bring some kind of shoe with you because as the sun comes up like katherine said it's going to get hot [Music] [Music] oh man this is harder than i thought it would be [Music] oh hallelujah i see the lake i can almost touch it it's right there [Music] wow shells this water is like so milky looking this is only the second time we've seen lake michigan since we've been in the great lakes and it is like a milky like glacial like the glacier water yeah it is so gorgeous we're at the caribbean or something wow [Music] hahaha to give you a bit of a back story on where the name sleeping bear dunes comes from it comes from the native americans and we read two different legends and they're pretty similar so we'll give you the gist of them there was two baby bears and a mama bear and they were trying to swim across the lake from the other side and this is where the two versions start to vary a little bit but one of the versions we read said that the mother makes it to the shore and she goes on top of a bluff waiting for her cubs to arrive but unfortunately the cubs get really tired and drown on their way across the lake but they later re-emerge as the two manitou islands and then the sleeping bear dune is named after the mother who is forever looking over her cubs [Music] [Music] this is probably the steepest hill we're about halfway back i feel like i'm parallel to the ground yeah you could just crawl up this if you wanted to oh lord jesus my calves are on fire we did it took us about two hours and 20 minutes and that does include us hanging out at the beach for a little bit it was so much fun but it totally kicked our putts [Music] next up we're driving the pier stocking scenic drive which is a 7.4 mile drive that goes through dune and forest areas with amazing views of lake michigan and the surrounding park the road is named after pier stocking who was a lumber man in the area and he loved this area so much that in the 1960s he literally built a road on top of the dune so he could share it with others he maintained the road until his death in 1976 and he charged 2.75 for visitors to drive the road the area around the road was made into a park in 1970 and in 1977 they purchased the road and made it a part of the park they renamed the road in his honor and then rebuilt it in 1984. [Music] [Music] [Music] this dune system that stretches along the western shore of michigan is actually the largest freshwater dune system in the world so large you can see it from space [Music] [Music] [Music] so sleeping bear dunes national lakeshore split up into a few different areas and they're all really close together but they're all separate from each other we just headed to the area near the town of empire to do the empire bluff trail which is about 1.5 miles should be pretty easy and it's very very popular the parking lot is packed but it's supposed to have some of the best views in the park [Music] [Music] i cannot get over how incredibly blue this water is and it's kind of a hazy day so i feel like it's not even in its full glory right now but it is like a turquoise color it is stunning [Music] so [Music] sweet sweet act [Music] we've left sleeping bear dunes for now because we were getting mighty hangry so we headed into traverse city to a place called slaptown burgers to get lunch so we were wondering why this area of town was called slabtown and so a quick google search later told us that this area back in the 1800s was home to wood carvers and sawmill workers so these workers would build houses and buildings out of the salvage slabs of wood from the sawmills so this spot has a ton of unique burgers and we actually ended up getting the same things it just sounded so good to both of us we got the pungies pepper burger pepper patty they told me rhymes with bungie because i really struggled on how to say it but it has some onions on here normally comes with ketchup as well there's pickles and then there's it looks like a pepper jack cheese on top and then there's a surprise inside which we will show you when we get to it are you ready for the surprise let me show you i don't know if you can tell and we'll try to get a better shot of it if we can't see it here but the inside of the burger is stuffed with bacon jalapeno jalapeno jalapeno and cream cheese three of my favorite things but the burger patty as you can see it's got a nice little crisp burnt little not burnt but just done just right and the inside is nice and juicy all the cheese the bun everything is so dang good i instantly tasted the jalapenos that are stuffed in it as soon as i did it oh it's so creamy like it's just cheesy and creamy and it's still so hot oh i was pretty sad that when we went through minnesota that we didn't go through minneapolis because they're famous for a burger called a juicy lucy which has a bunch of cheese stuffed inside the burger but maybe this is kind of making up for it just a little bit we'll be be back to get the real deal for sure this will hold us over until then we also got regular fries and sweet potato fries we went from hanger to happy [Music] [Applause] you would think we would have learned by now not to eat ice cream on the vlog on a muggy day because it just melts everywhere and it's a disaster but we're doing it anyways because we're really hot and we want ice cream we drove a little bit out of the downtown area traverse city to a spot called moomer's homemade ice cream which came very highly recommended for many of y'all what makes this place so awesome is that it's a dairy farm and an ice cream shop and they make the ice cream using the milk from the cows right behind me [Music] oh my gosh i panicked i didn't know what size to get i know what flavors to get i hope you like it she surprised me on maybe both flavors i don't know i don't know i didn't know what to do on top we've got here would you say sea salt caramel salt caramel and then cherries which has like brownies uh black cherries from this area because they're a very large cherry producer over here so creamy tastes really fresh and it's just really refreshing on this hot day and that is so dang good the brownies with the fresh cherries they just mix so well it's like sweet and salty and tart and creamy with ice cream i've already been licking the sea salt caramel as it drips and it's very good so i'm just gonna try mine which is just the black cherry i believe because i couldn't have the one brownie in it but it's just black cherry ice cream with black cherries in it that are grown in the area oh the cherries seem super fresh in there i was expecting them to be kind of harder from being in the cold ice cream but they have like a good like kind of juice and a little bit of a crunch to them oh this is just what we needed we have been sweating like crazy today this is insanely creamy it's just so fresh and i just love that we're eating the ice cream that's made from the milk from the cows it is just you can you don't it doesn't get any fresher than this there's also nothing like enjoying your ice cream with the occasional whiff of uh hay or manure or anything this adds to the experience [Music] we have made it back to sleeping bear dunes national lakeshore for one final adventure we're doing a hike to pyramid point you can do a longer loop trail which is about 2.7 miles but we're feeling pretty tired so we're just gonna go out to the overlook area in back which i think is around one to two miles not totally sure i've read a few different numbers [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so as you can see in the sky the clouds have kind of rolled in and on our way out here we were kind of nervous that the water wouldn't be as blue or not as you know vibrant that was false because it is still super gorgeous super blue this spot is also amazing because you can see the islands the two manitou islands off in the distance here [Music] [Applause] we're heading out of michigan for now and heading down to northwest indiana to spend some time with family for a couple weeks we had hoped to do a lot more in this area but to be honest with you we are exhausted burnt out and we are in desperate need of some time to catch up on a bunch of work and probably most importantly uh just simply rest what what is wrong i don't know what that word is we don't know what rest or break means but don't you worry you won't even know that we're gone because our videos are about two to three weeks delayed anyway so by the time you even see this video we'll be back on the road and hopefully be recharged so we can power through the rest of the year and all of our fall adventures we have planned and i got me a couple slabs of burgers look at the grease dripping through there the grease ain't dripping i ain't eating that's what i always say this is the first time i've ever said it if the grease ain't dripping i ain't sipping i'm trying to think of a way to make it right if it ain't greasy i say no for sheezy i don't know i don't know i'm really hungry if you can't tell [Music]

Channel: Adventures of A+K

Views: 14,753

Rating: 4.9805355 out of 5

Keywords: sleeping bear dunes, traverse city michigan, northern michigan, pure michigan, lake michigan, traverse city, sleeping bear dunes national lakeshore, sleeping bear dunes climb, empire bluff sleeping bear dunes, pyramid point trail sleeping bear dunes, things to do in michigan, things to do in michigan in summer, what to do in michigan, what to do in traverse city michigan, michigan travel vlog

Id: UDenu9T9Kto

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021