Beautiful Sleeping Bear Dunes Documentary Will Play on PBS

Congratulation to Michigan documentary film maker Keith Patterson as his latest film, "The Spirit of Sleeping Bear Dunes," just won the top prize at the Central Michigan University Film Festival for Best Michigan-Made Feature Documentary, according to the Leelanau Ticker.com.

And, as an added bonus, PBS picked it up to air on their stations.

PBS hasn't released run dates and times yet, or if they will run it on their app, but hopefully we all should know soon.

   👇 BELOW: THESE MICHIGAN ROAD ONLY LEAD TO ONE PLACE! 👇

Patterson, a film maker turned ad-man, turned film maker again, is known for producing a feature film about Grand Rapids, Beer City, USA, and others before tackling the Sleeping Bear Dunes project.

Do you actually know the legend of Sleeping Bear Dunes? I didn't. I guess I've just always accepted this fantastically beautiful National Park in Michigan overlooking our beautiful lake, and never inquired about how it got it's name. It's pretty cool!

The National Park Service says there are two tales told which are much the same, but I think the one most commonly heard is the tale from "Anishinaabe (Odawa/Ottawa, Ojibway/Chippewa and Potawatomi) oral tradition of a sacred place within their homelands in the Great Lakes." The story goes like this:

"Long ago, along the Wisconsin shoreline, a mother bear and her two cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by a raging forest fire. The bears swam for many hours, but soon the cubs tired. Mother bear reached the shore first and climbed to the top of a high bluff to watch and wait for her cubs. The cubs drowned within sight of the shore. The Great Spirit created two islands to mark the spot where the cubs disappeared and then created a solitary dune to represent the eternal vigil of mother bear."

Patterson said, in a story on Leelanau Ticker.com, that he is hoping for this to become a TV pilot with each new episode featuring a different national park.