Exploring Lake Michigan’s Ice

The holidays are winding down, giving me time to breath and dream about one of my family’s favorite winter traditions: exploring Lake Michigan’s Ice. We usually don’t make it to the ice until the weekend of Valentine’s Day, but this year I am hoping to get there earlier and more often.

Stepping onto the winter shoreline of Lake Michigan is exhilarating. The landscape, filled with sand and ice and devoid of plants, calls to mind photos of the moon or distant planets. Wind whistles over the landscape, whipping up water and sand which in turn creates craters, hills, valleys, and icebergs. The brisk air and ever-changing landscape awaken our adventurous spirit — we are explorers discovering new lands.

The photos above and the following two were taken at Muskegon State Park. If you are up for an extended outing, consider visiting The Muskegon Winter Sports Complex (which is only a couple miles from the beach). Here you will have access to one of only four luge tracks in the United States as well as ski trails, ice skating, sledding, and snowshoeing (rentals are available for each activity). They also offer a warming house, snacks, and beverages.

Exploring a frozen frontier and running down sand dunes can brighten a cold, February day.

Sometimes you can even catch great waves in the winter. This photo was taken years later at the same park.

February 2014 brought the biggest mounds of snow and ice we have ever seen on the shoreline. Snow was piled upon ice, upon snow, upon ice at Holland State Park.

Here you can see how small our boys looked next to a mound
of snow and ice at the end of the Holland State Park pier.

When we go to Holland we often go to Pigeon Creek Park too. The park offers snowshoe and ski rentals and lighted trails. We’ve had a lot of fun exploring their cross country ski trails.

This is an up-close shot of one of the mounds of snow.
Everyone was excited to find a big sheet of ice to hold for the photo.

The ice is one of our favorite shoreline wonders. It forms in clumps and sheets of white, blue, grey, and green.

Here the ice is blue-green, pushed up by the water to create sheets of ice piled one on
top of the other and forming a huge ice crystal with dramatic shards coming out the top.

The Holland Lighthouse was surrounded by ice and being pelted by snow that day:

Two months later, in April, it looked like this:

April is a great time to view the ice if the winter has been a cold one with lots of snow. The landscape will not be as dramatic, but there will still be some transformed, icy shorelines to take in.

An extended shoreline formed by snow and ice.

We love to take our out of town guests to the lakeshore in the spring. Temperatures are usually warmer, helping ensure that guests enjoy their stroll through the unique landscapes. The boys had a great time playing in the sand with their grandparents in April of 2014 at Saugatuck Dunes State Park.

The pools of water and soft sand made for some fun creations.

We got lucky in February of 2017 and were able to combine our ice viewing with a weekend at Timber Bluff on Saugatuck’s lakeshore. Timber Bluff has a number of beautiful cabins to choose from and Lake Michigan is just across the street from the property.

Being so close to the lake allowed us to catch the ice at sunset.

We had lots of fun exploring the beautiful ice-scapes during the day too.

The boys even found a place to throw rocks and have a splash contest.

One year we had the opportunity to stay at a friend’s cabin up north. We saw some great bluffs and ice while visiting the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We parked along the road for Esch Road Beach to explore this Lake Michigan Ice.