Waterways

Almost half of Michigan’s 275,000 trademark dune acres are in public parks, preserves and national lakeshores.

Associated more with oceans, rip currents form when waves pile up along shorelines then shoot back out to sea in small underwater rivers, often dragging along with them unsuspecting swimmers.

Officially adopted as Michigan’s state stone in 1965, Petoskeys are actually petrified coral, leftover fragments of the reefs that existed 350 million years ago during the Devonian Period when salty warm-water seas covered the northern half of the state.

Get your sand wet. Equal parts sand and water is the correct ratio, says Janet Moore Schrader, a sand castle instructor and individual winner of last year’s Grand Haven Sand Sculpture Contest.

St. Joseph’s nationally-accredited art museum houses its permanent collection entirely outdoors, with sculptures dotting the shoreline between New Buffalo and South Haven.

The Queen’s Cup, June 29. The 74th sailing of one of yachting’s oldest cups begins at the South Shore Yacht Club in Milwaukee, Wis., and finishes 78 nautical miles later in the first-time host city of South Haven.

Beyond a roller coaster, penny arcades, ice cream and other sugar-spun sweets of summer, visitors were drawn beginning in 1910 to the Silver Beach Carousel.