It was pretty winding up there on top of the dunes!
The Silver Lake area is well-known for its sand dunes, and are the last dunes in Michigan that people can actually drive on still. There are jeep, ATV and buggy rentals all over the place, and the campgrounds are full of them!
This guy wasn’t from our campground, but there was an orange one just like it!
Tom and Nicolas were ready to let the air out of the truck tires, stick a flag on it, and head out there with the rest of the crazies! But No, we need to be able to depend on this truck to get us home! So, they decided that they would have to settle for renting something, or finding somebody to take them out.
Maybe these DNR officers will let them take a spin on their ATV!
We rode bikes down to the pedestrian area of the dunes, and climbed to the top to check out the action. The kids got to the top first (big surprise!), and headed right over to watch the trucks come down the hill.
Watching the trucks, buggies and ATVs race over the hill – from a safe distance!
Four dune buggies – ready to race down the hill!
We found out later that this hill is the fourth in a series referred to as “Test Hill”, and you have to be pretty good to make it to this point!
We watched for awhile, and then headed back. The kids found a dead tree that somebody had tied a rope to – they decided to try it out!
Bryce took a nice spill!
They had a lot of fun competing to see who could land the furthest out from the tree.
Stopping long enough for a picture.
Everything was going fine until the big kid decided to take a turn at the rope swing – and Nicolas brought the branch down with him!!
No more rope swing – but at least the branch didn’t land on anybody’s head!
One last action shot before we got back on the bikes!
With all that exercise on the dunes, it’s amazing we were able to bike back to the campground!
Tom & Nick seriously had the bug to get out on those dunes in a vehicle, so Tom made it his mission to find somebody to take them! Later in the day, he struck up a conversation with some guys in the campground with a big ‘ol Ford pickup, and they offered to come by the next morning and take them out for a ride.
Couldn’t go out in anything but a Ford!
These young guys were really nice, and they had 4 very excited passengers!
Tom and Nick
Paul and Hannah
Nicolas said that the roughest part of the ride was the trail to get out to the dunes! Once they got there, they took a spin down to the Lake Michigan beach, and then past “the dragstrip”, where there were tons of people just hanging out and watching the action.
It’s like a giant tailgating party out there – tents and grills, people everywhere!
The guys they went out with had a whole array of vehicles besides the truck –
dirt bikes,
and ATVs, too!
They all had a great time, and really appreciated these guys taking them out to share in the whole dune experience!
You sure had fun, eh? Looking at the pictures makes me want to repeat our summer getaway last year! My friends were planning some extreme sports to try, and my uncle recommended ATV rides. It was a remarkable experience! I mean, the full-blast thrill brought by the ride adventure was something worth doing again! =)
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