The Dune Climb & Pierce Stocking — a stop on M-22 North.
Coming up on your left is the Dune Climb, and this is the one thing nearly every visitor does — a hundred and fifty foot wall of sand that you are actively encouraged to run up.
It's hard work and it's wonderful. Kids go up it like goats; adults arrive at the top on their hands. From the crest you look back east over Glen Lake, which is one of the great views of the park, and if you keep going west over the back side, it's roughly a two-mile trek through the dunes to actually reach Lake Michigan — plan on three to four hours round trip, carry water, and don't start it in the afternoon. Barefoot in July is a bad idea; that sand gets hot enough to blister.
A little further north is the entrance to the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, a seven-mile one-way loop with overlooks — including the famous Lake Michigan Overlook, where a boardwalk puts you on the very edge of a four-hundred-fifty-foot drop. If you only have time for one thing, honestly, do that drive. It's the postcard in every direction and there's a small fee with your park pass.
Pierce Stocking, by the way, was a local lumberman who loved this bluff so much he built a private road so people could see it. The park kept it and put his name on it.