Sleeping Bear Dunes

Michigan is beautiful!  Truly, a beautiful and amazing place!  The week of July 4th we went with some of our favorite people to Northern Michigan and had a wonderful week of adventures together.  This camping trip prompted us to upgrade from our four man tent to a ten man tent!  We haven't camped as a family since before Tanner and Reid were born.  The kids thought the tent (and the whole experience) was awesome!

We were the first to arrived and enjoyed setting up camp, having dinner and our first night of s'mores.  

 The next morning we had a great breakfast with those that were there. It was the one morning we actually made breakfast and it was yummy, complete with whipped pancakes by Matt, look at him go!

 We spent the next few days doing several outings, but ultimately enjoyed hanging out at the lazy river and lake.  In the picture above you can see Angie and Lori are sitting in the Platte River, warm and slow moving, maybe four feet deep at the deepest point.  Gretchen is sitting on the small peninsula that ran along the shore of the lake and the river, behind her his lake Michigan.  It was amazing!

 We floated the river over and over, built sand castles, headed to the lake to "cool" off, and stayed longer than we should have each day.

 We were having so much fun, Tanner could hardly take time to chew his food!

One day I dropped the boys off about a mile up from where were beaching and they floated all the way to our beach spot.  They could be on the tube, or just float the river, it was awesome!

I love Andrew's face!  It's so telling of how much fun these kids had together!

We drove into Traverse City for ice cream and to watch fireworks, these kids were out within minutes of riding in the car.  Being that far north, it doesn't get dark until 10:15, combine that with constant play and it makes for really tired kids!

One morning, Mike and Matt got up early and hiked the dunes all the way to the lake.  They had a great hike and the scenery was gorgeous!

 Climbing the dunes!  I was surprised these kids went as far as they did, I think they especially loved running down the dunes, and then going straight to the water!

The one mishap of the whole trip was a rainstorm while we were gone watching fireworks.  It was a pretty warm week, so none of us (except for the ever-diligent Bennetts) had our rain tarps on, trying to get a nice breeze through our tents.  We came home to an inch of water in our tents!  Everything was soaked!  Most slept in their cars that night.  Luckily, we were next to the Bennetts and they were kind enough to help us pull everything out of our tent and we kept sopping up water and wringing it out.  We had an extra dry tarp, they had an extra sleeping bag and somehow we made it work sleeping in our tent that night.  The kids were so tired, they had no idea what was going on. After all our sopping and wringing, we said goodnight to the extremely helpful Bennetts and curled up under a towel and slept surprisingly well considering the circumstances.

We loved this trip!  I think we'll make it a tradition for years to come!  Thanks Fors, Conrans, Vachs, and Bennets for camping with us!