Leaving Michigan

 

I last left you while we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We left there a week ago and moved to Traverse City, Michigan for a few days.  Traverse City is a beautiful town on a bay of Lake Michigan.  It has very vibrant and popular downtown area.  We spent Saturday morning at their farmer’s market, walking Front Street and then having lunch at the Grand Traverse Pie Company.  We took pieces of pie home for later (very good).

Besides seeing Traverse City the reason we stopped in this area was to see Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  It is about 30 miles from Traverse City and has some of the largest sand dunes in the US on the shore of the lake.  They have it set up nicely with a scenic drive through the park with overlooks to see the dunes.

Hard to tell but this is looking straight down from the overlook.  This dune is 400 feet tall.  There are actually people down at the bottom.  Some are walking back up on the dark line you see in the center of the picture.

View of the lake through the trees at the top of the dune.

From Traverse City we made a stop in Ionia, Michigan which is about 30 miles east of Grand Rapids.  The purpose of this stop was to visit the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum.  This is the 11th of the 13 Presidential Libraries that I have visited.  Very beautiful museum (his actual papers (library) are in Ann Arbor), and very informative considering he was only President for a couple of years.

We have now moved into the Amish country of Ohio.

Route:  From Munising, Michigan we took Highway 28 east to Interstate 75 south to Highway 31 south to Highway 131 south into Traverse City.  From Traverse City to Ionia we took Highway 131 south to Interstate 96 east to Ionia.