Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive

The Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive is how you see Sleeping Bear from above by car: a 7.4-mile one-way paved loop through forest and dunes north of Empire, with 12 numbered stops. They range from picnic areas and a covered bridge to overlooks of Lake Michigan, the Glen Lakes and the dunes.

The entrance is off M-109 north of Empire, and you need a park entrance pass (see licenses and passes). Leave any trailer at the Shauger Hill lot before you start. Give it at least an hour and a half to two hours if you stop at each one.

Make time for stop 9, the Lake Michigan Overlook, on the park’s tallest dune bluff, about 450 feet above the lakeshore. The tradeoff is the climb: it and the neighboring Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook are reached by a steep asphalt path and boardwalk. If steep paths are hard for you, the North Bar Lake Overlook (stop 11) is fairly flat, and the park lists accessible toilets there.

The road is named for Pierce Stocking, a lumberman and self-taught naturalist who bought forest land south of Glen Haven in 1948. He planned a road to the top of the dunes in the early 1960s and opened it to the public in 1967 as Sleeping Bear Dunes Park, which he ran until his death in 1976. The drive became part of the national lakeshore in 1977 and was later renamed for him.