Lake Bluff Farms: Manistee, Michigan

I wanted to take a break from my posts about Cleveland, Ohio to talk about a really cool experience my wife and I had this past weekend. I know a lot of you don't use Facebook, but for those of you that do, have you ever had an advertisement pop up on your feed, or one of those "news stories" about the 5 most unique things to visit in some random location?

Well, that's how I discovered Lake Bluff Farms. I was scrolling through my Facebook which I maybe do once a day or every other day and I happened to see some post that was highlighting this location. I did a little bit of research and discovered that it was open to the public (sort of), and I figured since we were going to be right down the road this summer, we should definitely visit.

The thing that makes Lake Bluff Farms so special is the fact that on the property they have a handful of Giant Sequoia trees that were brought to the area from California when they were just six inches high back in 1948. According to the website, only three of the trees have survived, but the largest one stands at 116 feet tall and it is the largest Giant Sequoia east of the Rocky Mountains.

Call me a nerd, but I think that is pretty cool.

Believe it or not, at 116 feet tall, this massive tree is only about half the size of other similar ones found throughout the world. It's actually a bit of a miracle that these handful have done so well as experts in the field point out how far they are from their natural climate.

We broke the rules a little bit and had our friends middles school son step over the rope and stand by the tree to show just how big the trunk is at the base. We were sure not to disturb any of the other nature. There is actually a large natural area beyond the trees that covers about 76 acres. There were other trails that we could have explored, but we had a couple other stops to make ahead of us.

Lake Bluff Farms sits right on the shores of Lake Michigan and offers some pretty fantastic views. The water is so amazingly clear, if you ever get the chance to visit, I promise you will be impressed. Apparently as you can see from the sign above, it's also a pretty important area for bird watchers. We didn't see anything of note while we were there, but I'm not really a birder.

As I said, the property itself has more than just the giant sequoia trees, there is also a wildflower field, a variety of other trees, and a farmhouse that you can rent out for family vacations. There was a group of people staying there when we visited, so we had to be careful to stay clear of the house and not disturb them. For that reason I didn't get any photos of the building, but you can look on the website I linked above if you want to see photos.

We spent about a half hour walking around the property looking at the different trees and natural wonders. For that reason I am going to include this post in the #wednesdaywalk tag sponsored by @tattoodjay. I've never been to northern California, but I was explaining to the others in our group that there are sequoias in California so big that you can drive cars through them. This one still has a bit to grow before it gets to that point. Maybe in another 100 years!

As you can see from the other photos I showed a little earlier, they have since planted about sixteen more giant sequoias around the area that the original three were planted. Hopefully those ones are able to thrive as much as the three here have.

I honestly thought I got some shots of the other two, but I can't seem to find them now.

Lake Bluff Farms was a great way to start our morning of adventures and I think it would be cool to explore a bit more of the property if we had time. I definitely want to go back somewhere down the road and see how the new giant sequoia trees are faring!

If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend you check it out, it's pretty monumental!

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