By: bound2explore  May 9, 2016

Sometimes it amazes me how diverse and beautiful American landscape is. I had been thinking to fly to Dubai for sand boarding in the desert, but somehow something always got in the way. While researching about sand boarding, I accidentally found out that my nine hours away by car neighboring state-Michigan, offers exactly what I was looking for. The dunes in Silver Lake is a perfect place for sand boarding. The Silver Lake is located about 3 hours from Detroit, Michigan. The nearest town to Silver Lake is Mears.

We packed the bag and flew to Michigan in August and drove about 2 hours from Detroit, Michigan to Grand Rapids. We decided to stay in Grand Rapids instead of Mears. Grand Rapids is a city and offers nicer restaurant, hotel and more things to do. The next day we drove over an hour to Silver Lake. The two of us parked the car and went straight to the rental place to pick up the sand board. Unlucky for us, the parking lot by the sand dunes were completely full so we had to park on the shoulder off the local road and walked all the way to the bottom of sand dunes while carrying the sand board. This place has no stairs or any lifts to take you the top of the sand dunes, so we climbed the sand dunes all the way to the top. The view from the top of sand dunes was beautiful. It looked like a real dessert and when we looked down, the beautiful Silver Lake was awaiting us at the bottom of Sand dunes on one side. As a group of the children that appeared out of nowhere started to cheer us up for anticipating us sand boarding, we hopped on the board and slid down.

Based on our experience, I can tell that sand boarding is easier than snowboarding, you really don’t need a class even if you do it for the first time. Just put your feet on the board, hold the rope that connected to the board and slide down the dunes. Of course we fell so many times but it was so much fun.

Since it was such a nice summer day, we ended our day by jet skiing in Silver Lake. The same rental place where we rented a sand board also offered a rental for jet-ski, paddle board and kayak.  So whenever you are in Michigan, explore the Silver Lake, you just don’t know what kind of adventure awaits you.