The park is located at the western end of Kauai and has many miles of shoreline that averages about 300 feet from the barrier dunes to the surf line.

The Peninsula still has quite a view overlapping transgressive barrier dunes and it is believed that they have shifted north from Bate Bay.

It since has developed a core group of homestead residences, but the emphasis is oriented as a second-home beach community along Lake Michigan in the barrier dunes.

Modern geological techniques such as core drilling have identified the site of the vanished sacred Lake Lerna, which was a freshwater lagoon, separated by barrier dunes from the Aegean.

The scrubby barrier dunes dotted with freshwater ponds and low growing shrubs merge into uplands with locust and hackberry.

On the South Carolina coast, storm-driven seas chewed up barrier dunes.

Pounding surf and buffeting winds keep the low barrier dune paralleling the beach sparsely vegetated.

Water filled swales, bogs, and marshes occupy the land behind the barrier dune.

When barrier dunes reached sufficient height, the windward faces were planted with tougher sword grasses.

Kennemer is set back from the sea, but Noordwijkse lies exposed, just behind the barrier dunes that shield against the North Sea.