Winds Howling

Earlier this summer we spent a night camping at Silver Lake State Park on Lake Michigan. This park is defined by large expanses of sand dunes, with dune buggies, Jeeps, pick-up trucks and everything else crawling over them all through the summer. We were just there for a hike and a camp, though.

We spent about 2 hours hiking, covering a distance of 4 miles and stopping for a while at a concession stand halfway through.

We camped at site 53 of the state park campground for a cost of $56.

Here are some dune views from the hike.

Along our hike we got to see some people going down the dunes on little surf boards.

We stopped for refreshment at a Google Maps-official food truck called Lighthouse Grill Concessions.

This was also a good spot to watch the vehicular madness.

Silver Lake itself is a small, and shrinking, lake separated from Lake Michigan by a couple of layers of dunes. The campground and the namesake town of Silver Lake lie along its shore.

The lake looked great at sunset. I especially liked the human figures on the crests of the far dunes, and the headlights from the ORVs getting in the last few laps.

The dull roar of engines clambering over the dunes carried across the lake and into the campground throughout the evening. By 9:25 p.m., lots of these were making their way back to their campsites, either rumbling in under their own power or towed by trucks and camper vans. I woke to the sound of these same engines rolling back toward the dunes by 8 a.m.

The campground itself was nice to amble through, with a clean beach and some strange playground equipment that we had fun climbing around in at night.

There was some new little thing under construction at the campground, though we couldn’t tell what.

On the way out of Silver Lake, we got breakfast at The Golden Eatery, which was the exact diner breakfast we were looking for, even though the AI slop posters were disappointing on the way in.

On our way to Silver Lake, we passed by the Electric Forest music festival, visible from the road as a jaw-droppingly enormous mass of tents. Later that weekend, a dead newborn baby was found in a porta-potty at the festival. Three months have passed since then. While putting this post together, I looked to see if they ever found the mom. They’re still looking for her.