Air Date: Week of July 14, 2023

Sleeping Bear Dunes along Lake Michigan welcomes 1,600,000 visitors annually. Visitors enjoy hiking the dunes, biking on the Sleeping Bear Heritage trail, and exploring the nearby towns. (Photo: Sarah Mahaney)

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore covers a 35-mile-long stretch of Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline and features forests, beaches, dunes, and historic lighthouses. Living on Earth intern Sarah Mahaney recently visited the lakeshore and brought back an audio postcard.

Transcript

O’NEILL: Summer is the most popular time for Americans and travelers from abroad to visit our national parks, monuments and lakeshores. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore covers a 35-mile-long stretch of Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline and features forests, beaches, dunes, and historic lighthouses. And it takes a lot of volunteers to keep it looking beautiful. Living on Earth intern Sarah Mahaney recently visited the lakeshore with her family and brought back this audio postcard.

[BIRD AND BICYCLE SOUNDS]

KELLY: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has got 72,000 acres. And so, if you're where we are today at Esch Road Beach, you see Lake Michigan, just beautiful. Or you can be floating down the Platte River or the Crystal River, on kayaks and canoes. So, it really depends on where you go and what you want to do.

My name is Kerry Kelly. I'm the chairman of the board for the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes and manage the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail.

The tallest dune at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is 450 ft. (Photo: Sarah Mahaney)

As a recreational facility within Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail is 20 miles long. There were a couple of motivations, the local community came to the park and said, you know, we think we would like to see a bicycle trail or a multi-use trail within the park because there was none.

I retired, and I was looking for a way to give back. So, I got involved with the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes. I've done quite a number of different volunteer projects here. I just love interacting with people that come up to visit the lakeshore, and with the staff. And so that's part of it too. I think that people make it make a big difference. Our volunteers will be out, walking the beaches, picking up litter, walking the trails, identifying where there are downed trees or erosion issues, riding the Heritage Trail, answering questions for visitors and that sort of thing. Most of our visitors that come here are not familiar with the area. So, our ambassadors are out on the trail. They're wearing these bright orange vests so that people can recognize that they're kind of an official representative of the of the park.

Kerry Kelly is the Chairman of the board for the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes and manages the Sleeping Bear Dunes Heritage Trail. (Photo: Courtesy of Kerry Kelly)

We have some threatened and endangered species. The Great Lakes piping plover, I think there are only 70 or so pairs of them, and about half of those are in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. So, we have a big program and the friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes is supporting the park and funding that program to protect the nesting sites for the piping plover.

[PARK SOUNDS]

O’NEILL: That audio postcard from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore came to us from Living on Earth intern Sarah Mahaney.

Links

Learn more about Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Learn more about the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes