Approaching Empire — a stop on M-22.
We're coming into the village of Empire, and this is where our stretch of M-22 ends — but it's also where the most spectacular part of this coast begins, so let me hand you off properly.
Empire is a small village with a beach, a couple of restaurants, and the headquarters and visitor center for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Stop there if you're carrying on north — you'll want a park pass, and the rangers can tell you what the dune conditions are doing.
The name, by the way, comes from a ship. A schooner called the Empire got frozen in the ice here in the eighteen sixties and sat out the winter, and the settlement took its name. Almost everything on this coast is named after either a boat or the man who owned the mill.
Just south of the village, Empire Bluff has a mile-and-a-half trail out to a viewing platform on a bluff four hundred feet above the water — arguably the best single view in Michigan, with the dunes running north and the Manitou Islands out on the horizon. It's an easy walk through woods with a gorgeous payoff.
Stay with me for the last word.