Day Fifty-Five

Day fifty-five found us headed back to Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes to check out some trails and drive the Pierce Scenic Drive.  Along the drive, we stopped at a Dunes Overlook, and it was packed with people!  When we approached the area, it was actually a sand dune/bluff that extended all the way down to the water’s edge, and a lot of people were making their way up and down it.  It looked REALLY steep, so I decided to wait on the top in the sand with Buster while Sam and Jim went down to the water.  Oh boy, was I glad I did!  While we were waiting, I kept watching the people coming up, and a lot of them were really struggling!  The rescue squad showed up with all their equipment, and kept walking down a little ways to look over the edge checking on someone.  Turns out that a man had overdone it, had thrown up and was laying on the ground, so someone else had called rescue.  By the time they got there, he was up and SLOWLY making his way up the slope, so they just kept an eye on him for a while.  Another woman approached the rescue team while they were there and asked if they would check her husband because he was having chest pains after the climb.  They checked him but he was okay, so they left.  Sheesh!!

Meanwhile, it was an hour-and-a-half before Sam came back over the ridge, and another twenty minutes before Jim crawled up (which is how most of the adults climbed up)!  J  After some recovery time, we walked over to the boardwalk lookout point, and we could see all the way down the slope they had climbed.  Wow!  It was almost straight down, and we read some info that said it was 450 feet high!  Yikes!

We drove to Glen Arbor for lunch again, this time across the street from the day before so Buster could hang out with us.  Sam was so hungry that he ate two orders of chicken nuggets which was about 16-20 pieces plus French fries!  He was stuffed!  Needless to say, we decided enough “hiking” had been done that day, so we headed back to the campground.