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Sleeping Bear Dunes

Photo: Rachel Kramer / CC BY 2.0 · source

🏖️ Beaches

Sleeping Bear Dunes

Empire / Glen Arbor, MI · Lake Michigan

About

This is the rare beach where you arrive by climbing: perched dunes rise 450 feet straight off the water, and from the Lake Michigan Overlook the shoreline drops away in a single dizzying sweep of sand into water that runs from pale turquoise to deep open-lake blue. Down at the bottom the beaches are wide, quiet, and freshwater-cold, with the Manitou Islands floating on the horizon and a 35-mile stretch of Lake Michigan coast to wander. Come for the dune climb and the overlook, stay for the kind of Great Lakes shoreline that makes people forget they are nowhere near an ocean.

Highlights

450-foot perched dunes that plunge straight into Lake MichiganLake Michigan Overlook on the Pierce Stocking Scenic DriveThe Dune Climb and miles of wide freshwater beachViews to the Manitou Islands across turquoise water

Getting there

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From Pacific cliffs and Hawaiian bays to Outer Banks dunes, Great Lakes sand, and Gulf sugar, these are the beaches across the country worth the drive, the flight, or the ferry. Some you walk a mile to reach, some you take a boat or a ferry, and a few you just pull off the highway and gasp. The best beaches in America, coast to coast to coast.