a place to strech our legs.... WOW!

Since Traverse City wasn't too far from my parent's cottage and the Cherry Festival was going on, we thought we would take a day and go up there. We left later in the morning and got the Traverse City in a little over an hour. I had not been to the Cherry Festival in at least 20 years and didn't remember that there really isn't too much for a four year old and 20 month old to do there. We walked around a little bit, tasted some cherries, looked at some boats and went back to the car. I knew that the Sleeping Bear Dunes wasn't too far away and so we thought we would drive over that way. We drove and drove looking for the actual park and the dunes (we did see one dunes climb, but didn't think that Ben would make it up!). After awhile of going down the same road for what seemed like forever and after listening to two little ones complain in the backseat we turned around and looked desperately for some place we could get to the water. We saw a little road that had to go in the direction of the lake and thought why not. We even saw someone walking their dog and asked if we could get to the lake on this road, he gave us some directions (which made no sense two minutes later). We continued down this little road, which seemed to get smaller and smaller, then we saw signs that it was a seasonal road (probably for four wheelers). But we drove through the forest (as Sam said) and made it out. Found a dead end road and at the end of it was a set of steps. I got out and checked them out and there was the lake... finally.
















We couldn't believe how beautiful it was once we got down the steps... and the fact that we were the only ones there. We all kicked off our shoes and got our feet wet. Sam and Ben had a great time running up and down the beach and playing in the sand and getting into the water as much as they could without bathing suits. We spent an hour there... just running and walking and stretching our legs.

We got the boys cleaned up (thank goodness I had an extra change of clothes in the car) and had dinner at this tiny little town called Glen Arbor (it was just perfect). And ended with some ice cream for the kids.

I took over 100 pictures... it was just too perfect not too! You can see all of them out here.
Video below too.