Wilderness State Park

Note: It’s been a busy week or so, so we’re a little behind on our postings. We’ll get caught up over the next few days. We were at Wilderness State Park last week.

This was our first extended state park stay of our trip, and it was a good one. We stayed here as a jumping off point for Mackinac Island, Mackinaw City, and other area towns, but our time in the park itself was nice.

The sunrises over Lake Michigan’s Big Stone Bay were spectacular. I “discovered” them on our first morning there taking Barnie for his morning walk. We set out a little after first light and decided to check out the lakeside campground loops. The sky was showing some pink and yellow when we got there, so we headed to the beach itself to see what it looked like. It was something. The small bay creates a great setting for enjoying some really epic sunrises. The sun doesn’t rise over the water, but it casts its colors over it from the east, making for a special scene not easily found at home.

This is a large park with lots of campsites. We camped in the Pines Campground, which is the only loop that’s not on the water. We were hoping to book site that backed onto the lake, but there weren’t any available. We were, however, able to get what appeared to be a good site in this loop. We reasoned that if we weren’t on the water itself, we should pick the nicest site we could, not worrying about the beach. We did well. It’s a large site with a level asphalt parking pad that was easy to back into. Our site borders the woods, our preference if we can’t back into a water view.

We had turkeys at our site. Yes, turkeys. A flock of them walked through our site every morning and evening when Barnie was inside. Our first day here, we were still setting up when they wandered through. It was stunning. I sat down and started taking pictures with my phone, since my camera was inside with LeeAnn and Barnie. She saw them too and took pictures of me taking pictures of them. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to wild turkeys, and it was really special.

Saturday we finally took a drive around the park itself. We took a road that turned into a dirt road that seemed to go on forever. We were really feeling like we were in the middle of nowhere in deep dark woods, except we’d sometimes pass a vehicle going to the other direction. We kept wondering where they were coming from and what we’d find when we got there. The answer is a beach, and it looked like people were rock hunting there, which appears to be a big thing here, and something LeeAnn really wanted to do, so we took some time and picked up a few nice rocks ourselves. I’m sure they’re nothing special, but we like them.

*LeeAnn rock hunts in Lake Michigan at Wilderness State Park.*

Speaking of rocks, my new rock painting journey is continuing. I painted and placed three rocks while here. In summary, this is an out of the way park, but a nice one. Its popular, but in general people are good about keeping the noise and light to a minimum. We enjoyed our stay and would stay again if it fit our travel plans.

Canyon Falls

Upper Peninsula!