From our campsite at Sleeping Bear Dunes North Platte River campground, we headed north along the lakeshore with our first stop at Esch Beach. Reviews told us it would be a good place to find the elusive Petoskey stones. Another review said it was no longer a nude beach, but as cool as it was I didn't think anyone would bare it all today. As you can see below, Joani found one! It was very distinctive - there was no mistaking it was fossilized coral and it was the right size for our souvenir rock collection.
It is easy to see how this came to be named Alligator Hill.
One stop along the drive was at the top of a dune. Signs warned that it was very steep with a 450-foot elevation drop to the water's edge. Two school buses unloaded kids with no concept of just how tough that climb would be, so after the easy slide down a few kids and a few adults were struggling to make it back up. They needed a lot of help and had not made it back up before we left. I can only imagine how embarrassing it will be. Good thing it is almost the end of the school year so the teasing won't last long.
When we completed the Pierce Stocking drive we decided to check out a few sights south of our campground on our last day before moving on. We visited a highly regarded beach in Elberta that really did nothing for us, but we did walk out a long, long pier to marker lights at the entrance to the Frankfort Harbor (which is where the Betsie river joins Lake Michigan). Below is the Frankfort North Pier Head - I don't know how it differs from a lighthouse, but I trust Google maps has it correctly identified.
On the way home, we stopped at Point Betsie Lighthouse. It was closed for the day, but we had no problem walking around the grounds to find a good shot of this very nice looking structure. Nearby we joined several other people looking for rocks along the shoreline. One local guy found a Petoskey stone that he showed me. When I told him I had not yet found one yet he gave it to me since he had a sizable collection already. I accepted it since it was my birthday although I never mentioned that to him.
No comments:
Post a Comment