Aral was a logging settlement with a colorful history, largely because it witnessed one of the area’s few pioneer shootouts. Aral is located four miles south of Empire at the end of Esch Road, where Otter Creek empties into Lake Michigan. Today it’s one of the most popular swimming beaches in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and offers few signs of its colorful past, when Aral was a thriving wooding town.