Sleeping Bear Dunes, part 2

For the second half of the trip, I had a couple more hikes planned. In the morning, after another round of sandwich making, we headed out for Alligator Hill. Alligator Hill has a total of nine miles of trails divided into three loops. We took the shortest loop to the Islands Lookout and back with a detour along the spur to the Big Glen Lookout, for a total of 4.3 miles, our longest single hike of the trip. The internet told me that Alligator Hill was a fun hike with great views of Lake Michigan and Glen Lake, but especially after the previous day the views were good but not amazing.

On the trail at Alligator Hill

The dirt trail is mostly wooded, and Alligator Hill is indeed a hill, so there is some ascending/descending, but nothing overly strenuous. After 1.3 miles, you reach the Islands Lookout which does give nice views of Lake Michigan, including North and South Manitou Island. While we were stopped to snack on bananas and take photos, we saw a bald eagle in the wild for the first time, and I did get a not entirely in focus picture with my telephoto lens. Shortly after that point, we turned off the main trail to the Big Glen Lookout. It was a 1.6 mile detour, and when we got to the clearing in the trees I’m not sure I can say it was really worth it. About all I can say about it is that it was a view of a lake.

View from the Islands Lookout

Back at the parking lot after a couple hours+, we piled back into the car and drove to the Dunes Trail to have lunch at the picnic area there. From there, we continued on to the last hike I had planned, Pyramid Point. Pyramid Point is another short trail that leads to a view of Lake Michigan. There’s a 2.7 mile loop, but we just did the 0.6 miles (one way) to the lookout and back. At the lookout, we had more large bird sightings – a small group of turkey vultures and a likely red-tailed hawk (the red tail was not visible in the photo I got). We took about an hour to hike up to the lookout, enjoy the lake from the top of the bluff, and hike down from the lookout.

View from Pyramid Point

At that point, it was midafternoon, and we’d completed all the hikes I had planned for us, so we drove around for a bit, stopped in Glen Haven (a former company town where you can still see the general store, cannery-turned-boathouse-museum, and blacksmith shop), then returned to the Airbnb early. After dinner, we walked to the beach for a Lake Michigan sunset, then closed out the night by watching Shrek Forever After.

From left to right: bald eagle, turkey vultures, red-tailed hawk

Sunset over Lake Michigan

We probably could have fit more into the trip, but we saw most of the main attractions, except maybe really getting to enjoy the beach and I’ve heard the Maritime Museum is interesting. It felt cooler than my Upper Peninsula trip back in October, but it didn’t rain. I’m really not a huge food/shopping person, so I didn’t mind the tradeoff of closed stores for no crowds. I shot the whole trip on my T6 with an ultrawide (10-18mm) and a telephoto (55-250mm) lens, and I think it works well for hiking trips, possibly not as good if we had been indoors more/at all. Overall, it was a good trip.