On the open road again... from Michigan

The endless rambling continues. We have been in Michigan since Wednesday. We camped in NW Michigan for three nights. This is a overwhelmt Lakesingly beautiful region with huge deciduous forests. The Great Lakes are remnants of ancient river valleys that were widened by glaciers. The glaciers also deposited immense amounts of sand, creating Sleeping Bear Dunes, where we hiked three days ago. Sleeping Bear Dunes feels like infinite sand, soft,powdery sand.We hiked up the biggest dunes, I am guessing the high point was 800 - 1000 feet above blue, immense Lake Michigan.
The dunes are moved by wind, but a species of dune grass holds the sand grains together, stabalizing the. Eventually dead grass decays so trees can grow, mainly in the back dunes, which are protected from wind by the younger foredunes. We saw this at Sleeping Bear, but also at smaller dunes to the south. These lovely dunes formed from sand that the wind blew from Sleeping Bear Dunes. Trees include white pines, eastern hemlock, sugar maple, beech, paper birch and others. They grow in patches on dunes, forming a patchwork, like a quilt of sand and forests. I love dune ecology!
We dropped off the rental care in Grand Rapids two days ago and spent Saturday night at an AIR B&B. This is an international network of people who rent rooms in their homes to travelers. We'll be staying in others on this trip. This one was amazing. We stayed with a school secretary,
her four kids (8-16), and their 13 year old guest from Spain. It was a wonderful time of story telling, games, talking, cooking together and water balloons. It beat a hotel!

We are now north of Detroit visiting an old friend of Kate's. We'll head for Toronto tomorrow...
We will post in 2-3 days if not before and will get pix up at some point.