If this really is L. lichenoides, it’s the most well-developed “bushy” specimen I’ve ever seen. But check out google images — there are lots of our usual scrawny scraggly things, but there are also a few that look remarkably similar to yours. I don’t know how to improve our confidence in this ID. I guess we could stick it under a microscope and verify presence of Nostoc, and the cortex of this L. lichenoides (and several other species) is a distinctive handsome brickwork. If either of those tests fail, we know to look elsewhere. Maybe if you can tease out a single “tree” and look at it very carefully under the dissecting scope, you can finally find some flattened branches and/or apothecia?

I’m used to seeing L.lichenoides as a scrawny guy dwelling in between mosses or other lichens. Also, usually it shows some branches with flat surfaces so it’s easier to narrow the specimen down to a genus right away.

You’ve described Leptogium lichenoides perfectly. There are some other “dwarf-fruticose” blackish lichens, like Polychidium muscicola for example. But none of those can come close to this size. What an amazing set of specimens!

The whole thing looks like a tropical forest under the microscope, where tops of the “tree crowns” are isidia-looking projections. I tried to dig deeper, and all I saw were intertwined “branches”, and more “branches” (the thing is pretty thick).
It grows within few yards from the Lake Michigan shore on large boulders, just where the tree line meets the beach.