Michigan Silver Lake Sand Dunes

thomat65

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Nov 9, 2019
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351
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Southwest MI
Made a trip up to Silver Lake Sand Dunes this weekend with some buddies. We all packed into my completely stock 04 LJ with stock sized pizza cutters. It was a blast!!

We probably tried Test Hill two dozen times. What I lacked in tire we tried to make up for in speed. But the moguls really kill the speed, and even in the smooth spots the 4.0 sometimes just didn't have the power to maintain it. That and the tires loved to dig trenches. Maybe dropping more pressure would have helped a little, I dunno. We may have looked like idiots, but we finally made it over! Sorry, no picture proof--we crested the top and were having too much fun to stop.

We zipped around, between, over, and behind just about every dune or pile of sand there was. High centered a couple of times but nothing a little bit of shoveling couldn't fix. Had fun creeping between trees, ripping donuts in the valleys, and tearing horseshoes into the dune sides. And toward the end of our time there we figured out how much fun 2 Hi was in the bowls dug out by quads.

Lessons learned from the most fun time in my Jeep to date:
  • Sometimes all you need is more skinny pedal
  • Sometimes all you need is less skinny pedal
  • A stock Jeep is pretty capable
  • Wider tires would have been awesome
  • I now know what the bump stops feel like
No injuries and we all had a good time. I did notice a new noise in the rear as I got close to home. Will need to check that out later.

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We zipped around, between, over, and behind just about every dune or pile of sand there was. High centered a couple of times but nothing a little bit of shoveling couldn't fix. Had fun creeping between trees, ripping donuts in the valleys, and tearing horseshoes into the dune sides. And toward the end of our time there we figured out how much fun 2 Hi was in the bowls dug out by quads.
This sounds like WAY more fun than the last time I went there...I was under the impression (from all the signs posted) that you're only supposed to go up and down the dunes...
 
This sounds like WAY more fun than the last time I went there...I was under the impression (from all the signs posted) that you're only supposed to go up and down the dunes...
The tallest dunes are in sections marked with one-way signs. The signs say "no U-turn after cresting" or something like that. But not all the dunes are in those areas. That, and sometimes we legitimately couldn't make it up the dune. You do have to watch your six wherever you are.

There was a general oval-shaped traffic pattern... everyone tended to run around in a clockwise fashion through the whole park, especially in the high-traffic areas. We eventually learned not to go against that flow, where the lower-traffic areas were, and stuff like that.

Edit: the place where I remember us making horseshoes was in this area:
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In that area there are some smaller dunes and traffic going every which way. We tried really hard to go one-way in the one-way zones and would back down slowly when we couldn't make it over then try again with more gas.
 
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Seemed like most of the trees were magnetic. We almost got stuck to one once. One guy we saw got sucked into one and folks were helping winch him out.
 
I really like the dunes. The wheeling is fun, of course, and the area in general is great for the kids. They have a ton of fun at the beach, and there are lots of great campgrounds in the area.
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